Bakhmetyev B.A. (1880-1951), physicist, hydraulic engineer

Categories / Science. Education/Personalia
BAKHMETYEV Boris Alexandrovich (1880-1951), hydraulic engineer, statesman and public figure. Graduated from the Institute of Transport Communications Engineers (1902). From 1905, worked at the Polytechnic Institute, was appointed professor in 1913. Bakhmetyev, while serving as a general manager of a private company, was one of the first experts to offer a design for hydroelectric power stations on the Dnepr, the Volkhov and other rivers, implemented in the USSR at a later time. In 1915, he was sent on an assignment to the USA to co-ordinate military supplies to Russia. Returned to Petrograd in 1916; was appointed deputy minister of Trade and Industry of the Provisional Government in March 1917; in April of the same year he was appointed Russian ambassador to the USA. After his retirement in 1922, he settled in New York, and returned to engineering, research and teaching. Bakhmetyev was elected professor of Columbia University. One of the founders of the Engineering Foundation of the USA, he was appointed its chairman in 1945. Bakhmetyev is also credited as a founder and director of the Humanitarian Foundation (and its main sponsor) and the Relief Foundation for Russian Students. Bakhmetyev helped finance foundation of the Archives of Russian and Eastern European History and Culture in Butler Library of Columbia University (Bakhmetyev Archives), which hold private collections of emigrants from Russia and Western Europe, as well as materials on emigrant organizations.

References: Будницкий О. В. Послы несуществующей страны // "Совершенно лично и доверительно!": Б. А. Бахметев - В. А. Маклаков: Переписка, 1919-1951: В 3 т. М.; Стэнфорд, 2001. Т. 1. С. 16-114.

V. V. Cheparukhin. Bakhmetyev Boris Alexandrovich
Будницкий О. В. Послы несуществующей страны // "Совершенно лично и доверительно!": Б. А. Бахметев - В. А. Маклаков: Переписка, 1919-1951. М.; Стэнфорд, 2001 Railway University
Polytechnical University
Provisional Government of 1917