Fabrikant Veniamin Lvovich (19 March 1908, Orsha, Mogilev Province — 1981, Riga) — power engineer, scholar, educator, inventor, poet.
Veniamin Fabrikant was born into a family of teachers. At the age of two, after the death of his mother, he remained in the care of his father. After completing a seven-year school in 1923, he entered the Moscow Electrotechnical College. Upon graduation, from 1928 he worked as a technician at the Tomsk power station, and later in the “Teploelektroproekt” system in Moscow. He served in the Red Army.
In 1936, he was expelled from candidate membership in the VKP(b) for concealing the social status of his parents; a year later he was reinstated, and in 1938 he became a member of the CPSU. In 1936, he graduated from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. In 1939, he was again conscripted into the army. In autumn 1941, as part of the Moscow Workers’ Division, he participated in the defense of Moscow.
He became Candidate of Technical Sciences in 1945 and Doctor of Technical Sciences in 1959. He was an associate professor at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute (1945–1961). In 1960, he was elected professor at the Riga Polytechnic Institute, where he headed the Department of Electric Power Stations, Networks, and Systems.
Fabrikant was a leading specialist in relay protection and power system automation and the founder of a scientific school in this field. In 1950, he was awarded the Stalin Prize of the USSR for the development and implementation of high-speed filter-based high-frequency protection systems. He was honored as a Distinguished Scientist and Engineer of the Latvian SSR (1966).
He authored about 100 scientific publications, including 12 monographs, and more than 30 inventions. Under his supervision, over 30 dissertations were completed. He was a member of the relay protection commission of the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology, as well as of several commissions of the USSR Ministry of Higher Education and academic councils. He was awarded six medals and an Honorary Diploma of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR, and from 1979 was a personal pensioner.
From the age of ten, he wrote poetry, but published little during his lifetime (in 1961, the newspaper Sovetskaya Latviya printed one poem). After his death, several collections of his poetry were published in Riga, as well as the verse novel Fyodor Soev (2000).
A memorial plaque in his honor is installed on the building of the Faculty of Power Engineering of Riga Technical University, where he worked for more than 20 years.
Works:
• Filters of Symmetrical Components («Фильтры симметричных составляющих»), Moscow–Leningrad, 1950; 2nd ed., 1962
• Theory of Windings of Alternating Current Relays («Теория обмоток реле переменного тока»), Moscow–Leningrad, 1958
• Application of Semiconductors in Relay Protection and Power System Automation Devices («Применение полупроводников в устройствах релейной защиты и системной автоматики»), Moscow, 1962 (co-author)
• Relay Protection of Distribution Electric Systems («Релейная защита распределительных электрических систем»), Moscow, 1965 (co-author)
• Elements of Relay Protection and Power System Automation Devices and Their Design («Элементы устройств релейной защиты и автоматики энергосистем и их проектирование»), Moscow, 1968
• Fundamentals of the Theory of Constructing Measuring Elements of Relay Protection and Automation («Основы теории построения измерительных органов релейной защиты и автоматики»), Moscow, 1968
• Problem Book on Relay Protection («Задачник по релейной защите»), Moscow, 1971 (co-author)
• Problem Book on Elements of Automatic Devices («Задачник по элементам автоматических устройств»), Moscow, 1976 (co-author)
• Distance Protection («Дистанционная защита»), Moscow, 1978
• Elements of Automatic Devices (Textbook for Higher Education Institutions) («Элементы автоматических устройств»), Moscow, 1981