Pozdiunin, Valentin Lvovich

Born Nov. 27 (Dec. 9), 1883, in Buzuluk, now in Orenburg Oblast; died May 23, 1948, in Moscow. Soviet scientist in shipbuilding and mechanics. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939). Member of the CPSU from 1938.

In 1908, Pozdiunin graduated from the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute and became an external student of the Kronstadt Naval Engineering School. From 1910 he taught at the Petrograd (Leningrad) Polytechnic Institute, where he became a professor in 1920. From 1924 he worked in the Technical Council of the Registry of the Soviet Union examining ship designs. In 1930 he became a professor at the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute. In 1941 he was made the director of the hydraulics department at the Institute of Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Pozdiunin’s major works were devoted to the theory of ship design, the theory and calculation of marine equipment and systems, high-speed ship propellers, and naval architecture and hydromechanics. In the general theory of ship design developed by Pozdiunin, the task of designing a ship is viewed and worked out as a combined engineering and economics problem. In 1939 he designed an original driving mechanism, the supercavitating propeller. He was awarded two orders and various medals.