Kirill Ivanovich Shchelkin (17.05.1911 —8.02.1968) — Soviet physicist, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1953). Born in Tbilisi. Graduated from the Simferopol Pedagogical Institute (1932). He worked at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences and headed the chair of combustion at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
His work was in the physics of combustion and explosion, in particular the detonation of gases. He made a great contribution to the understanding of such processes as the transition from combustion to detonation and detonation spin. He proposed a mechanism of feedback through turbulence for the acceleration of a flame, leading to the transition from combustion to detonation in tubes, studied the interaction of turbulence with a flame, gave a formula for the speed of a turbulent flame, clarified the role of turbulence in the onset of detonation and showed how the speed of detonation in tubes depends on the roughness of the walls. The last finding forced a revision of the classical theory of detonation. He studied the structure of the detonation wave and showed that spin detonation is a limiting case of pulsating detonation, connected with the instability of the front of a direct detonation wave. He substantiated the existence of such an instability and gave an approximate criterion for its onset.
He made a significant contribution to the solution of the atomic problem in the USSR as a leader of work at the junction of different branches of science and technology.
Three times a Hero of Socialist Labour. Laureate of the Lenin Prize and of four State Prizes of the USSR.