Nikolai Shumilovskii, in full Nikolai Nikolaevich Shumilovskii (also transliterated as Shumilovsky), was born in 1897. After graduating from Leningrad Polytechnic Institute in 1929, he worked at many plants in the USSR: the Kulakov Plant, Electropribor (Leningrad), and the Thermal Control Plant (Moscow) of the All-Union Precision Industry Association (VOTI; since 1932).
In 1938, Shumilovskii began his R&D activities at the newly organized Institute of Automation and Remote Control, the USSR Academy of Sciences. In a short period, demonstrating profound scientific erudition and organizational abilities, Shumilovskii became Head of the Laboratory of Automatic Control at IARC in 1940. Then, he headed the Laboratory of Elements, the Laboratory of Complex Automation of Continuous Production Processes, and, finally, the Laboratory of Radioactive Isotopes. Since 1950, he headed the Department of Complex Automation of Production Processes, which was subsequently reorganized into several independent laboratories of the Institute. During that period, he was Director of IARC for some time.
Shumilovskii pioneered domestic science on automation of continuous production processes in the chemical, oil, and gas industries. On his initiative, a complex team was organized at IARC, including chemical institutes of Moscow, Leningrad, Sverdlovsk, and other cities. Under his supervision, works on automation of sulfuric acid production were deployed. With the development of nuclear physics, Shumilovskii paid more attention to the application of radioactive isotopes in measuring technology. As a result, a special laboratory for the application of radioactive isotopes in the automation of different industrial processes was organized at IARC; moreover, the Council for Scientific Foundations of Automatic Measuring Devices using Radioactive Isotopes and Nuclear Radiation was created at the Department of Technical Sciences, the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Shumilovskii always associated his R&D works with training engineering and scientific personnel. His teaching activities began in 1928 at Leningrad Polytechnic Institute and continued throughout his life in leading institutes of the USSR: the Moscow Electrotechnical Institute of Communications, Moscow Aviation Institute, Moscow Power Engineering Institute, Lviv Polytechnic Institute, the Institute of Automation of the Kirghiz SSR Academy of Sciences, and others.
Shumilovskii prepared a whole generation of Soviet scholars (doctors and candidates of sciences), who continued his research. Currently, some of them are Academicians and Corresponding Members of the Academies of some CIS countries.
Shumilovskii was no less successful in organizing Soviet science. As mentioned above, he created the Department of Complex Automation of Production Processes at IARC. Later on, several institutes were established under his supervision in Soviet Republics (nowadays, independent countries): the Lviv branch of the Institute of Automation and Remote Control, the USSR Academy of Sciences (subsequently, the Institute of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences); the Institute of Automation in the Kirghiz SSR Academy of Sciences (by 1960, a large research center in Central Asia). Shumilovskii was its first Director. In 1960, for his scientific and organizational activities, Shumilovskii was elected Academician of the Kirghiz SSR Academy of Sciences. On his initiative and with his active participation, Departments of Automation and Remote Control were established in several institutions of the country, including Lviv Polytechnic Institute and Frunze Polytechnic Institute.
Shumilovskii organized several all-Union meetings, including those on the application of radioactive isotopes in measuring technology, and participated in Commissions for Instrumentation Problems and Measuring Technology.
In the 1960s, Shumilovskii headed the Scientific Council for Problems of Electrical Measurements and Measuring Information Systems at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Control Processes, the USSR Academy of Sciences. At the same time, he was Deputy Chairman of the Commission for Automation of Seas and Oceans Research, established by the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
However, contemporaries remembered Shumilovskii not only as a remarkable scientist and organizer. According to those who knew him, Shumilovskii was a rare caring educator and sympathetic person.
His main books are as follows:
- Metody yadernogo magnitnogo rezonansa (Methods of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), Moscow: Energiya, 1966. — 140 p. (coauthors A.L. Skripko, V.S. Korol’, and G.V. Kovalev);
- Metod vikhrevykh potokov (The Method of Eddy Flows), Moscow: Energiya, 1966. — 175 p. (coauthors G.G. Yarmol’chuk and V.P. Grabovetskii);
- Metod vikhrevykh tokov dlya kontrolya proizvodstvennykh parametrov (The Method of Eddy Currents to Monitor Production Parameters), Frunze: Ilim, 1964. — 296 p. (coauthors G.G. Yarmol’chuk, V.P. Grabovetskii, and M.A. Prusov);
- Radioactive Isotopes in Instrumentation and Control, Macmillan, 1964. (coauthor L.V. Mel’tser);
- Radioizotopnye metody avtomaticheskogo kontrolya sostava slozhnykh sred (Radioisotope Methods for the Automatic Composition Control of Complex Media), Moscow: Energiya, 1964. — 64 p. (coauthors L.V. Mel’ttser and A.A. Kalmakov);
- Osnovy avtomatizatsii proizvodstva sernoi kisloty kontaktnym metodom (Foundations of Automation of Sulfuric Acid Production by the Contact Method), Moscow: Goskhimizdat, 1961. — 314 p. (coauthors A.G. Amelin and L.G. Pliskin);
- Mass-spektral’nye metody (Mass-spectral Methods), Moscow: Energiya, 1960. — 160 p. (coauthor R.I. Stakhovskii);
- Primenenie yadernykh izluchenii v ustroistvakh avtomaticheskogo kontrolya tekhnologicheskikh protsessov (Application of Nuclear Radiation in Automatic Monitoring Devices for Industrial Processes), Moscow: Gosenergoizdat, 1958. — 95 p. (coauthor L.V. Mel’ttser);
- Elektricheskie schetchiki (Electric Meters), Moscow: Gosenergoizdat, 1951. — 495 p. (coauthors P.N. Goryunov and S.M. Pigin).
They are presented in the Institute’s database:
https://www.ipu.ru/d7ipu/books_library_grid?combine=Шумиловский
Two journal papers by Shumilovskii are available at Math-Net.Ru:
https://www.mathnet.ru/php/person.phtml?&personid=180314&option_lang=eng
The list of his papers in Avtomatika i Telemekhanika can be found at:
https://www.mathnet.ru/php/search.phtml?jrnid=at&tjrnid=at&wshow=search&option_lang=eng
For their English versions, see the microfilm collection of Automation and Remote Control:
https://archive.org/details/pub_automation-and-remote-control
Some inventions by Shumilovskii are available at:
https://elibrary.ru/patents.asp
Articles about N.N. Shumilovskii
1. | Nikolai Nikolaevich Shumilovsky, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1967, no. 11, 215—216. |