VALENTYN MYKOLAYOVYCH BAKUL – CREATOR AND OUTSTANDING SCIENTIST Institute of Superhard Materials named after V.M. Bakul, NAS of Ukraine To the 100th anniversary of his birth (1908-1978) Author – N.F. Kolesnichenko, Ph.D.
For employees of the V.M. Institute of Superhard Materials Bakul of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the scientific and technical community of the tool sub-branch of mechanical engineering, 2008 will be especially memorable. This is the year of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Valentin Nikolaevich Bakul, one of our outstanding compatriots, a famous scientist, Honored Worker of Science and Technology, Doctor of Technical Sciences, recipient of many high government awards, Hero of Socialist Labor, and a great organizer of science and production. His activity throughout his working life was aimed at creation, and really contributed to the acceleration of scientific and technological progress in the development of production in the former USSR. This was especially clearly manifested with maximum efficiency in the 60s-70s of the last century. If by the beginning of the 60s, hundreds of metalworking, stoneworking, mining and other enterprises of the country used carbide and abrasive tools in their work, then the following years became a turning point for almost all industrial sectors in terms of the use of new tools and technological processes for processing metallic and non-metallic materials. These were the years of the beginning of the mass transition of industry to the use of diamond tools, unique in their properties and principles of operation. Such a revolutionary transition to progressive methods of work became possible thanks to the organization in Kiev in July 1961 of the Scientific Research Institute of Synthetic Superhard Materials and Tools, with a special design bureau and a research plant. The purpose of the Institute’s creation was to develop an industrial technology for obtaining synthetic diamonds, organize their mass production, create new tools based on them, and introduce them into production. The tasks set by the government for the complete rearmament of production were successfully solved by the Institute’s staff in an extremely short time with the direct initiative, participation and leadership of V.M. Bakul.
V.M. Bakul was born on August 11, 1908 in the village of Chernyshivka, Vinnytsia region (Ukraine) in the family of an army officer. After the early death of his father, he began his working life at the age of 12 as a hired hand on private tobacco fields. Then he graduated from vocational school and worked as a fitter at a factory while studying at the evening department of the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute. He was expelled from the second year of the institute on a denunciation for concealing his social origin (the son of a tsarist officer). The difficulties of life did not stop his thirst for knowledge. V.M. Bakul studied independently, and in 1929-1932 he worked as a designer, and then as a leading specialist – the head of the design bureau of the All-Union Association of the Coal Industry “Coal”. At the age of 22, V.M. Bakul registered the first invention to improve the operation of coal-cutting machines. His report on the use of hard alloys in the mining industry at the All-Union Scientific and Technical Conference in Moscow received a high rating, and he was invited to a technical conference in the Kremlin, held by People’s Commissar G.K. Ordzhonikidze. Let us quote one of the points of the conference resolution on the specified report: “Given the enormous importance of hard alloys, the conference asks Comrade Bakuly V.M. to publish his works or a book on the use of these alloys, which would be a practical guide in the work of mining enterprises. The conference considers it its duty to express gratitude to Eng. Bakuly V.M. for an interesting report, richly illustrated with practical material and samples.” This assessment of the work of the young researcher is indicative of all his subsequent activities. He never looked for easy ways, and brought everything he conceived to a logical conclusion.
Until 1941, V.M. Bakul worked as the head of the department of the Kharkov plant “Soyuztverdosplav”. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, he was evacuated with the plant to the Urals, where he managed the tool production workshop. The plant produced tank engines around the clock. The workshops were mainly staffed by women and children, but the plan was always carried out. The experience of difficult and harsh conditions tempered the character of Valentin Nikolaevich, helping him to overcome any difficulties, complete work on time, and not to lose faith in his own strength. In 1944, V.M. Bakul returned with his plant to liberated Kharkov, and in 1949 he was appointed head of the Kharkov branch of the All-Union Office “Tverdosplav”.
With 30 years of work experience behind him, he continued his studies, and in 1950 he graduated with honors from the Moscow All-Union Correspondence Polytechnic Institute.
In the next decade, a team of 14 employees of “Tverdosplov” under the leadership of V.M. Bakul develops, tests and creates industrial production of new carbide tools and drill bits for the mines of Donbas, cutters for automatic lathes, teeth for mining combines, tools for processing building stone, including high-hard granite. A signature Bakul style was formed in the work – from initial research, design searches and developments, to the creation of prototypes, and then the organization of industrial production. Research on the processing of building stone became the basis of a candidate’s thesis, successfully defended by V.M. Bakul in 1958 at the Academy of Architecture of the USSR (Moscow).
In 1957, “Tverdosplov” was transferred to Kiev and transformed into the Central Research Center for Carbide and Diamond Tools. A new twenty-year period of bright creativity of V.M. Bakul begins. His talent as a great organizer of scientific research, design developments, and the creation of new industrial technological processes is fully revealed.
Based on the scientific results in the synthesis of diamonds obtained at the Moscow Institute of High Pressure Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences by a group of researchers under the leadership of L. F. Vereshchagin, in 1960 V. M. Bakul goes to the USSR Government with a proposal to organize in Kiev the industrial production of synthetic diamonds on the basis of the Central Research and Development Institute he managed. This was a bold and risky proposal on his part, because there was no set of necessary production equipment, there was a lack of specialists and qualified personnel. However, the initiative was supported in Kiev and Moscow, relevant government resolutions were adopted and great assistance was provided in the acquisition and development of scientific instruments and equipment, hundreds of young specialists were sent to the Institute.
A powerful creative and production team was created from the employees of the Institute’s laboratories, design departments, and the experimental plant, which was charged with the personal example of V.M. Bakul’s attitude to work and understanding of its great importance for the country.
In the same years, the equipment necessary for synthesis was designed on its own – press units, high-pressure and temperature devices, control and measuring devices, etc. All equipment samples were manufactured by the Institute’s Experimental Plant, and the experimental samples were tested there, and the first industrial batches of synthetic diamonds were manufactured.
It was V.M. Bakul who was able to organize the production of the first two thousand carats of synthetic diamonds in 1961 (the year the Institute was founded), and starting in 1963, to organize the serial production of synthetic diamonds at his experimental plant in volumes that fully satisfied the country’s needs in those years.
The active activity of the Bakul Institute initiated a number of subsequent government resolutions on the construction of specialized factories producing diamonds and diamond tools, the creation in 1966 of a new diamond subsector of the tool industry of the USSR, which allowed the country to take a leading place in the world in the production and use of diamond products in the mid-1960s.
In those years, the Institute developed and transferred to industry diamond powders of the ASO, ASR, ASV, ASM, ASN brands and high-strength diamond crystals of the ASK and ACC brands. New superhard materials (STM) were created and put into production – cubic modification of boron nitride (cubonite), composite superhard material “Slavutich” for equipping drill bits; polycrystalline materials based on diamond (dismite) and boron nitride (ismite) for blade cutting tools.
Diamond tools were used in abrasive and blade processing operations of metal, polymer, wood, semiconductor materials, natural stone, glass, rubber, leather, etc., when drilling deep and ultra-deep wells, developing natural deposits of granite, marble, etc.
More than five thousand standard sizes of grinding, polishing and cutting tools made of diamond, cubonite and polycrystalline materials were created. These tools were distinguished by high results in terms of durability, productivity, processing quality, production ecology and economic efficiency (profit).
One ruble of costs for creating a tool made of superhard materials gave the country 5 rubles or more in savings. Diamonds even found exotic applications in the processing of rice and cotton seeds, which significantly increased their germination and yield, and were used in the production of other agricultural products. Diamond tools worked at thousands of enterprises in the country from the Kola Peninsula to Sakhalin, the Institute had a file with ten thousand enterprises and organizations that applied with letters for help in obtaining diamond tools and training in working with them.
16 years of work of the Institute under the leadership of V.M. Bakulya were marked by the development and improvement of technological processes for the synthesis of new NTMs for various purposes, the study of their physicochemical and mechanical properties, creation of new types of high-pressure apparatus and other equipment, test stands and devices. Over these years, more than 550 copyright certificates for inventions, 132 foreign patents and 26 certificates of registration of trademarks abroad have been obtained, 28 state standards have been developed. Over these years, 63 candidate and 2 doctoral theses have been prepared and defended. Employees have published 800 works in periodical scientific publications. In total, by 1977, more than 1,200 editions of brochures, recommendations, booklets, advertising materials were released with a circulation of more than 2 million copies. Since 1969, the scientific and production collection “Synthetic Diamonds” has been released 6 times a year with a circulation of 8 thousand copies, of which 1,200 copies were sent to more than 30 countries of the world.
Directly under the scientific supervision of V.M. Bakul, 23 postgraduate and doctoral theses were defended. V.M. Bakul published over 300 works, received 91 copyright certificates for inventions and 148 foreign patents for 15 applications in 16 foreign countries.
For the development of industrial synthesis of diamonds, V.M. Bakul was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor in 1963. For particularly outstanding services in the field of synthesis of superhard materials, the USSR Academy of Sciences awarded him the academic degree of Doctor of Technical Sciences “Honoris causa” in 1967.
V.M. Bakul is a person who built and left for future generations a magnificent Institute that opened up new possibilities for effective processing of difficult-to-process materials, and raised a team capable of developing the directions of his work in the new conditions of a market economy.
It has been 30 years since Valentin Mykolayovych passed away, but his Institute lives, works and proudly bears the name of its creator.
Today, the V.M. Bakul Institute of Superhard Materials of the NAS of Ukraine is a world-renowned materials science research center, which has a high rating for research into fundamental problems of synthesis of new superhard materials, which uses the latest scientific equipment in its work, including in foreign scientific centers, which develops nanotechnologies and nanomaterials, computerized research methods. Over the years, 43 doctors and more than 200 candidates of science have defended their dissertations at the Institute, more than 40 new materials have been developed. The Institute’s work has been awarded 38 state and international prizes and awards, as well as 18 personal prizes of outstanding scientists of the NAS of Ukraine, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and prizes for young scientists.
Every year, Honorary Bakulevsky Medals and Honorary Bakulevsky Diplomas are awarded to employees who have shown the best scientific and practical results. To mark the 100th anniversary of V.M. Bakul’s birth, a book of his scientific works and memoirs of contemporaries was published, who with a sense of deep gratitude talk about the years of working with him.
V. M. Bakul’s heart stopped on June 5, 1978. Everyone who knew Valentin Nikolaevich well will always remember him as a scientist, creator and talented leader, born to lead people, charge them with new ideas, energy and enthusiasm in the name of accomplishing great, useful and good deeds in life for the benefit of people, their native land.