Konstantin Petrovich Boklevskii

Born 1862; died June 1, 1928. Russian ship builder and engineer, a professor in the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute and at the Naval Academy.

Boklevskii graduated in 1884 from the Marine Engineering School at Kronstadt. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1888, he worked in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea shipyards. Later he directed the construction of vessels for the Far East. Boklevskii was the organizer and dean (1902 to 1923) of the department of shipbuilding at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, the first department of its kind in Russia. He performed exceptional services in the development of motor ship construction. In 1898 he proposed that internal combustion oil engines be used on ships. In 1903 he submitted a motor ship design with such engines, and he then planned a series of vessels having internal combustion engines for their main drives. Boklevskii was one of the organizers of the Russian Registry Society, which had the goal of freeing domestic shipbuilding from foreign tutelage. Following the October Revolution he became chairman of the Technical Registry Board of the USSR and directed the work of designing commercial ships.