Chinakal, Nikolai

Chinakal, Nikolai Andreevich 

Born Nov. 7 (19), 1888, in the village of Nur-Ali, in what is now Evpatoriia Raion, Crimean Oblast. Soviet scientist; specialist in mining. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1958). Hero of Socialist Labor (1967). Member of the CPSU since 1944.

Chinakal graduated from the Ekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk) Institute of Mines in 1912. In the early 1920’s he helped reconstruct and mechanize underground mines in the Donets Coal Basin, and in 1935 he proposed the shield system for working large beds in the Kuznetsk Coal Basin. From 1944 to 1973 he served as director of the Institute of Mining of the Siberian Division of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (until 1957, the Institute of Mining and Geology of the Western Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR).

Chinakal’s principal work has been devoted to the creation and improvement of systems of movable ceiling supports for mining large coal beds. Chinakal received the USSR State Prize in 1943 and the Lenin Prize in 1966. He has been awarded two Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and several medals.