VASILIY N. BOLTINSKIY – ACADEMICIAN OF VASKHNIL (THE USSR ACADEMY OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES)

The paper outlines the life and career of Vasily N. Boltinskiy, full member and Vice-President of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of the Stalin and State Prizes, Honored Worker of Science and Technology. He was a disciple and a scientific companion of Academician Vasiliy P. Goryachkin, the founder of agricul-tural mechanics. Vasily Boltinskiy belongs to the second generation of scientists and specialists who made a significant contribution to the development of the domestic branches of the tractor industry and farm mechanization. V.N. Boltinskiy conducted and summarized test results of more than 25 models of imported and domestic tractors. His recommendations were widely used in the practice of design organizations developing domestic agricultural machinery, as they most fully complied with the soil and climatic conditions of the country. A significant cycle of his works aimed at improving the fuel efficiency of tractor engines. His monograph "Operation of a tractor engine under an unsteady load" (1949) opened a new stage in the development of the tractor theory allowing to reveal the dynamics of steady and unsteady traction processes. This provided additional opportunities for raising the technical level of tractors. Along with the membership in the state scientific commissions, V.N. Boltinskiy carried out scientific supervision and coordination of state-funded research and development activities aimed at solving the problem of "Increasing the working speeds of machine-tractor units." The of-fered solution to that problem led to an increase in the productivity of machine-tractor units by 1.5 ... 2 times. In parallel with his research work, V.N. Boltinskiy was actively engaged in teaching, for 20 years he headed the "Tractors and Auto-mobiles" Department. Under his leadership, a curriculum was designed for the “Construction and Calculation of Tractors and Automobiles” course (1934) for the training of engineering personnel. His textbook "Automotive and Tractor engines" (1935), run into seven editions, was translated into Chinese, Bulgarian, Korean and Romanian. Practically all students of technical universities of the corresponding training profile were familiar with his textbooks. He prepared 40 PhDs and Doc-tors of Science.