Alexander M. Gorlov was entered into rest June 10th 2016. He was 85. Born into the family of a prosperous lawyer, his father was arrested and died in prison during Joseph Stalin’s purges. His mother also spent a number of years in concentration camps in Russia, which forced young Alexander Gorlov to spend some of his childhood years in the orphanage in a remote Russian Urals area.
Gorlov received his Doctorate in engineering and had a successful scientific career in Moscow for a number of years during the relatively liberal period of the so-called Khrushchev Thaw. He was granted the Gold and two Bronze Medals for Achievements of the USSR National Economy. In 1975 because of his friendship with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize winner and outspoken critic of the communist system, Gorlov was forced to break with his Soviet life and emigrate, eventually establishing a new home in the United States.
Since 1976 Gorlov has been teaching Mechanical Engineering in the Northeastern University combining it with extensive research work in the area of harnessing renewable energy from water flows and wind. In the pursuit of his lifelong dream of creating inexpensive, environmentally friendly hydro-power, Gorlov has developed helical turbines for use in the river, tidal, and open ocean currents. His innovation has led to a series of patents for the Gorlov helical turbine Gorlov Helical Turbine which shows great promise for alleviating the worldwide crisis in energy use. This invention was named one of ''Popular Science's top 100 innovations of 2001. One of the other Gorlov's inventions - "Terrorist Truck-Bomb Protection System" - is certified by four US patents and is placed on the US Department of State list of certified equipment. That allows the system to be used for protection of vital Government installations such as nuclear power plants, military bases around the world, embassies, bridges and tunnels as well as other potential strategic targets from terrorist attacks.
Gorlov has over 100 technical publications, including books, and 25 US and international patents in such fields as renewable energy, structural analysis & design, theoretical mechanics and the design of bridges and tunnels.
Services will be held at the Stanetsky Memorial Chapel, 1668 Beacon St in Brookline MA on Tuesday, June 14 beginning at 12 noon. Interment will follow at Sharon Memorial Park in Sharon, MA. Expressions of sympathy in his memory may be donated to Americans for Peace and Tolerance, 15 Main Street, Suite 118, Watertown MA 02472.
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