I. N. BUTAKOV

His Life and Work

On August 15, 1951, seventy years had passed since the birth of Innokenty Nikolaevich Butakov—a leading Soviet scientist and public figure, the “father of Siberian thermal-power engineers.” I. N. Butakov devoted his life to introducing advanced methods of production and to training highly qualified engineering personnel at Siberian enterprises, in thermal-power engineering and on railway transport. More than thirty years of continuous work by I. N. Butakov at the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute (formerly called the Technological Institute and the Industrial Institute) characterize him as a true Soviet educator.

I. N. Butakov was born on August 2 (15), 1881, into the family of the minor official Nikolai Andreevich Butakov, at the Alexandrovsky Works in Transbaikalia.

While still a boy, in connection with his father’s official transfers, I. N. Butakov visited the Nerchinsk Works, Verkhneudinsk, and Barguzin, and from childhood came to love stern Siberia, its majestic nature, and its boundless expanses. This love for Siberia, devotion to the cause of its industrialization and its cultural development constitute a characteristic feature of all his subsequent activity.

From the age of ten I. N. Butakov studied at the Chita Gymnasium. From the age of sixteen the gymnasium student Butakov gave private lessons (worked as a tutor). In May 1900 he graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal. Shortly before this the first train of the then still under-construction Great Siberian Railway had arrived in Chita. This awakened in I. N. Butakov the desire to study the locomotive himself in all its details, and to become a mechanical engineer. In the autumn of the same year he entered the newly opened Tomsk Technological Institute and graduated from it in December 1906, defending a diploma project on the topic “Main Railway Workshops,” with a detailed design of a foundry shop. In addition, the diploma work then required, “Variation in the Degree of Filling in Steam Engines with Varying Back Pressure,” carried out by I. N. Butakov, was subsequently revised by him and published in the journal Vestnik tekhnologov (Bulletin of Technologists). This was Innokenty Nikolaevich’s first scientific work.

After graduating from the institute, from January 1907 I. N. Butakov worked as a locomotive driver at the depot of Kurgan station, as head of the foundry shop of the Omsk Main Railway Workshops, as manager of the boiler shop, and finally headed the largest shop of the workshops—the carriage shop. At the same time he taught thermal engineering in the technical classes attached to the workshops.

From the Omsk Main Railway Workshops, I. N. Butakov was transferred in 1913 to Tomsk to the post of head of the technical department of the traction service of the Siberian Railway. Innokenty Nikolaevich combined his work as a transport worker with pedagogical activity at the Tomsk Polytechnic School.

After the defeat of Kolchak and the restoration of Soviet power in Siberia, I. N. Butakov continued to work in the administration of the Siberian Railway.

railway. As a prominent specialist, he is nominated for the post of head of the railway traction service, and then is appointed head of the road bureau of standardization—a newly organized service in Soviet railway transport.

With the establishment of Soviet power in Siberia, I. N. Butakov’s pedagogical work in higher education also begins. At first he is elected, by competition, as a lecturer at the Tomsk Technological Institute and, from 1918, conducts classes there with students; later he is elected professor of the Siberian Institute of Agriculture in Omsk, where, however, he declines to go.

In 1921 Innokentii Nikolaevich is elected, by competition, professor of the Tomsk Technological Institute, but even after this he continues for another 6 years to work in railway transport, now on a part-time basis. From 1923 to the present time he has headed the thermal-engineering specialty, which had reopened at that time, of the Tomsk Technological Institute and has led the special department of heat-power installations.

In 1940, for outstanding services in the training of engineering personnel, Innokentii Nikolaevich Butakov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and several years later—the Order of Lenin, a second Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and the medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.” In addition, he was repeatedly awarded badges as an outstanding worker in socialist competition of individual People’s Commissariats, and was awarded several dozen certificates of honor. In 1944 the Government conferred upon him the honorary title of Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the RSFSR. He was confirmed as Doctor of Technical Sciences in 1935.

The pedagogical activity of I. N. Butakov is especially fruitful because he equips his pupils not only with technical knowledge; he instills in them the habits of independent creative work, a taste for it, and love for the work, for the specialty they have chosen. All his pupils understand and value this.

A characteristic feature of Innokentii Nikolaevich is strict exactingness toward himself, toward his pupils, and toward his co-workers.

Innokentii Nikolaevich has managed to arrange matters so that failure to carry out an assignment is considered an extraordinary event. At the same time he devotes much attention to those who are falling behind (usually a few), holds talks with students, often visits their dormitories, participates in student celebrations, and organizes and directs the work of scientific student circles. In the department headed by I. N. Butakov, two doctoral and 17 candidate dissertations have been defended.

The scientific activity of I. N. Butakov and of the entire department he heads has always been connected with the pressing questions of engineering practice, with production, with the power industry and transport of Siberia.

Of great practical importance in their time were the works of Professor I. N. Butakov: “Methodology for Calculating Steam Pipelines of Power Stations,” “Mechanical Draft in the Boiler Room,” “Regenerative Heating of Feed Water and Air Economizers,” and “Combined Use of Heat.”

In the most recent period I. N. Butakov and the majority of the staff of the department headed by him have been working on the problem of using low-potential heat (secondary resources), while he himself has been working on questions of CHP plants and the correct determination of the cost price of the electric and thermal energy supplied by power systems, as well as on preparing for publication the book Heat-Power Installations.

Much has been done for the power industry of Siberia also by the pupils of Professor I. N. Butakov: Professor V. T. Yurinskii, Docents N. I. Anastasieva, P. A. Mukhachev, A. M. Sukhanov, V. N. Smirenskii, young scientific—

by the worker I. K. Lebedev and many other graduates of I. N. Butakov’s school, among whom are a number of major specialists holding executive posts in industry (A. N. Mankov, Ya. G. Makushkin, F. S. Dulnev, and others).

I. N. Butakov has published 144 scientific works, monographs, and articles on questions of engineering practice. In addition, he has written 12 articles on educational and methodological questions, published in the journals Higher School, Soviet Student Body, Bulletin of Higher School, and others.

For many years I. N. Butakov successfully combined his scientific and pedagogical activity with senior administrative work. At the Tomsk Technological, Industrial, and Polytechnic Institutes he held the posts of vice-rector for academic and scientific affairs, first dean of the Power Engineering Faculty, deputy director for academic work, and others. From the opening of the West Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, I. N. Butakov was the organizer and, for six years, the first director of the Transport and Power Engineering Institute of this branch (concurrently).

I. N. Butakov is a major public figure. For many years he was elected a deputy of the Tomsk City Soviet, and in 1950 he was elected for a second time as a deputy of the Tomsk Regional Soviet. Professor I. N. Butakov was a member of the Higher Attestation Commission, a member of the Committee of Scientists of the city of Tomsk, repeatedly headed the preparation and holding of various scientific conferences and other public events, and is a member of the Regional Planning Commission.

The life and work of I. N. Butakov show an example of service to the Motherland, to advanced Soviet science, and to the cause of training and educating engineering personnel. Despite his advanced age, Innokenty Nikolaevich continues to work actively both as a teacher and as a scientist and public figure.

Yu. N. Sokolov