The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

OBOUKHOFF, NICHOLAS MIKHAILOVICH (1873–1950).

A world-renowned researcher in electrical engineering, an inventor, and a mathematician, Nicholas Oboukhoff was a professor of electrical engineering, mathematics, and physics at Oklahoma A&M University (now Oklahoma State University) from 1929 until 1950. He was born Nicolai Mikhailovich Oboukhoff on July 8, 1873, in Novocherkassk, Russia, to Alexandra Krylova and Mikhail Oboukhoff, an attorney and judge. After his basic education Nicholas Oboukhoff graduated from the Imperial University in Moscow in 1895 and went on to earn advanced degrees in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering at universities in Karkov (now Kharkiv, Ukraine) in 1904 and in Paris in 1909. He had a notable teaching career in Russia, including at the Polytechnic Institute in Manchuria, where he was dean of the electromechanical division. He also consulted on projects in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

He came to North America in the 1920s to study for a doctorate in electrical engineering at California Institute of Technology. Nina, his Novocherkassk-born wife since 1924, came with him. He received the degree in June 1929 and in September 1929 joined the faculty of the newly created electrical engineering program at Oklahoma A&M in Stillwater.

In 1930 Oklahoma A&M opened an Engineering Experiment Station. Oboukhoff seems to have been instrumental in creating the entity. Like other research stations, it issued bulletins and publications. Among the first in print was Oboukhoff’s “On the Mathematical Solution of the Problem of the Most Economical Tower Spacing on the Transmission Lines,” relating to cross-country transmission of electrical power, a topic that remains current. He also investigated “the optimal wave length in wireless communication” and continued trying to improve medium- and high-frequency alternators.

An accomplished inventor, he received patents in France and the United Kingdom before his immigration to the United States and during his tenure at A&M. These dealt primarily with medium- and high-frequency alternators and include a resonance voltage limiter (1914), a “frequency changer and generator of alternating current” (1922), and numerous improvements to high-frequency alternators (mid-1920s). While at A&M he secured patents for a high-frequency alternator (1929) and a dynamo-electric machine (1929). These have had many applications in mining and radio transmission. Technical information on his patents is available in the U.S. Patent Office archive in the Edmon Low Library at Oklahoma State University.

Both in its theoretical and practical, experimental aspects, his work earned him an international reputation and reflected Oklahoma’s openness to innovators and innovations through scientific research. He published in the journals Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and Engineering and Science. For his expertise and contributions, he was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1938. He was also a Fellow of the Institute of Radio Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Geographical Society. A member of the Oklahoma Academy of Science, he frequently lectured at their meetings. His professional publications numbered forty-three articles in scholarly journals and fourteen bulletins of the Engineering Experiment Station.

Oboukhoff was also a philosopher and a historian. In 1938 he was awarded membership in the Southwestern Philosophical Society. One of his two invited lectures before International Congress for the Unity of Science was titled “Relation of Technology to Humanism in Goethe’s Fault and in the works of Saint-Simon.” He relished every opportunity to speak and teach in Stillwater on the history of Russia and Russian ethnic groups. Possessing a rich baritone voice and proficient in piano and violin, he had sung in the chorus of operas while living in Moscow. He often presented Russian classical music concerts in Stillwater’s public venues and in his home.

Nicholas Oboukhoff died on July 30, 1950, in Stillwater and was buried there. His wife, Nina, survived him. In 1951 she donated his entire personal library to Oklahoma A&M. He had become a naturalized citizen of the United States in January 1937.

Dianna Everett