Vladimir Alekseevich Kirillin

Born Jan. 7 (20), 1913, in Moscow. Soviet state and party figure; specialist in energetics and thermophysics. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1962; corresponding member, 1953). Member of the CPSU since 1937.

Kirillin graduated from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute in 1936. He has worked at the Kashira State Regional Electric Power Plant, at the Unifold Boiler Construction Bureau, and at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute (as a professor since 1952). He served in the navy during the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). He was deputy minister of higher education of the USSR from 1954 to 1955, vice-chairman of the State Committee on New Technology of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in 1955, chief of the department of science, higher educational institutions, and schools of the Central Committee of the CPSU from 1955 to 1962, and vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1963 to 1965. In 1965 he was appointed deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and chairman of the State Committee on Science and Technology of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

Kirillin’s major research has been on the thermophysical properties of various substances. In particular, he has studied the properties of water and water vapor, heavy water and its steam at high parameters, and the thermodynamic properties of a great number of solids at high temperatures. He has also been involved in developing magnetohydrodynamic generators for the direct conversion of thermal energy into electric energy.

Kirillin became a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1961 and a member in 1966. He was a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR at its sixth, seventh, and eighth convocations. He was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1951 and the Lenin Prize in 1959. He has been awarded four Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and a number of medals.