The surname of the hero of this article is known to every excellent student in school geography. Thanks to his travels, the naturalist Grum-Grzhimailo Grigory Efimovich introduced the world to the deserts and mountain systems of Central Asia and China. This name bears the pass to the Sikhote-Alin in the Southern Pamirs. It was his first expeditions to the Pamirs that are now known to every lover of geography.
Grum-Grzhimailo Vladimir Efimovich
But today we will not talk about him, but about his younger brother, a man no less outstanding, but unfairly slandered and forgotten. Engineer Vladimir Grum-Grzhimailo has done a lot in world metallurgy. What constituted the meaning of his life - the fiery furnaces of metallurgical plants, after his death, formed the basis for the industrialization of the Soviet Union.
Moscow Bureau of Groom
They arrived in Moscow in early July 1924 - professor of the Ural University, metallurgist Vladimir Grum-Grzhimailo with his family. We arrived at the invitation of the Supreme Council of National Economy to open the country's first design bureau of metallurgical and heat engineering structures. Vladimir Efimovich - 60. Life will give him another 4 years, but they will turn out to be the most fruitful among 40 years of hard work. The Moscow bureau completed more than 1,200 furnace designs, of which 800 were immediately built. Then a whole institute, the famous SteelProject, is formed from this bureau. But so far this is only a long empty room under the roof of house No. 3 on Bolshoi Afanasyevsky Lane, where the Experimental Electrotechnical Institute is still located. In the attic will make several partitions from the lining. For the latter, Grum-Grzhimailo himself will settle. Drawing rooms will be set up in the rooms, and his children will join them. This family atmosphere was preserved at the institute for many years.
The beginning of an engineering career
Vladimir Efimovich Groom-Grzhimailo recalled the beginning of his engineering career with great irony: “I didn’t know languages, I didn’t like books.” But, of course, he did not mean all kinds of books. Groom graduated well at the military gymnasium, where he was identified as a noble offspring after the death of his father. And the Petersburg Mining Institute is among the best. The family was large, lived in poverty, so he refused the offer to remain a graduate student at the institute and went to Nizhny Tagil as an engineer at the plant. It was an unforgettable universal school of life and profession. He managed to solve the problem that had occupied the minds of many people for 150 years, and to solve it by means available to a fifth-grade student — the movement of a flame in a furnace is the movement of a light liquid in a heavy one. This thought came to him during a conversation with the stove-maker, who explained to him that the whole thing was the movement of gases. But, of course, the path from these words to scientific theory was long enough. He turned into 5 volumes of his book “Flaming Furnaces”. This was a fundamental work, which was subsequently referred to by many foreign authors.
Revolutionary years
Groom's co-workers and subordinates recalled him as a loud, not shy, to speak directly and, perhaps, unceremoniously. True, always to the point. He appreciated this feature of his character, considered it a sign of will and personal dignity. In 1907, he, already managing the mountain Alapaevsky district, ran for the Third State Duma, but lost. This year has been a turning point. After losing the elections to the Duma, Grum-Grzhimailo also quarreled with employers, who were in a hurry to take back all the concessions to the workers. Groom resigned and received it. But then he was a brilliant engineer, already known throughout Russia, so that other people could take advantage of this circumstance, who offered him a chair at the Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. Here he worked for 11 years, and here his hydraulic theory of flame in furnaces finally took shape. Essays on it were published by all professional magazines in the world. There was nothing similar in metallurgy before that moment.
Years of the First World War
Groom was one of the first to give practical returns to his theory. Moreover, the state acted as the customer on his furnace. This happened after the outbreak of the war, for which Russian industry was not ready. Armies needed armor-piercing shells, but there was nothing to make them. The backbone of the bureau was then composed by Groom and Putilov engineers. Despite the modest size of the enterprise, it was Russia's first design institute of flame furnaces, which very soon put everything necessary for defense. The bureau had a standing order even in the revolutionary 17th year. But in 1918 it was all over - the bureau ceased to exist. Vladimir Efimovich leaves for Moscow.
The memory of the great engineer
The revival of the name Groom-Grzhimailo for some mystical reasons dragged on until the end of the 20th century. Only in the late 80s did the book of the writer Felix Vibe “The Tale of the Hardworking Groom” appear in the Urals. The SteelProekt Institute, paying tribute to the founder’s memory, spoke about it in a publication with a circulation of 1,000 copies on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the first Petrograd Bureau of Groom.
Grum-Grzhimailo Grigory Efimovich also remained in the memory of descendants. More than a dozen butterflies and insects are named after him.