Bokii, Boris

Born July 11 (23), 1873, in Tiflis; died Mar. 13, 1927, in Leningrad. Soviet scientist in the field of mining engineering.

After graduating from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute (1895), Bokii worked in mines in the Donetsk Coal Basin, where he introduced the continuous system of operation (progressive for that time) to replace the column method of operation. He also put into practice radical improvements in the technology of the underground extraction of coal. In 1906, Bokii defended his dissertation Selection of a System of Operations in Working Seam Strata, and in the same year he attained the rank of adjunct professor. In 1908 he became an extraordinary professor, and in 1914 an ordinary professor at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. In 1921 he became a member of the Scientific and Technical Council of the Main Mine Board of the High Council of the National Economy of the RSFSR and then that of the High Council of the National Economy of the USSR. He took an active part in restoring and redesigning the country’s mining industry (for example, the Donugol’ and Iugostal’ trusts). Bokii was the founder of the analytical method of planning mining enterprises. In 1902 he began publishing articles in Gornyi zhurnal (Mining Journal). In his three-volume Practical Course in Mining (1914) he provided a systematic exposition of the basic processes of mining engineering. In 1924, Bokii’s major work, An Analytical Course in Mining, was published.