About Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky
Mikhail Osipovich Dolivo-Dobrovolsky (Russian: Михаи́л О́сипович Доли́во-Доброво́льский; German: Michail von Dolivo-Dobrowolsky or Michail Ossipowitsch Doliwo-Dobrowolski; Polish: Michał Doliwo-Dobrowolski; 2 January [O.S. 21 December 1861] 1862 – 15 November [O.S. 3 November] 1919) was a Russian-born engineer, electrician, and inventor of Polish-Russian origins, active in the German Empire and also in Switzerland. After studying in Germany and while working in Berlin for Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), he became one of the founders (the others were Nikola Tesla, Galileo Ferraris and Jonas Wenström) of polyphase electrical systems, developing the three-phase electrical generator and a three-phase electrical motor (1888) and studying star and delta connections. The triumph of the three-phase system was displayed in Europe at the International Electro-Technical Exhibition of 1891, where Dolivo-Dobrovolsky used this system to transmit electric power at the distance of 176 km with 75% efficiency. In 1891 he also created a three-phase transformer and short-circuited (squirrel-cage) induction motor. He designed the world's first three-phase hydroelectric power plant in 1891. == Life == Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky was born as the son of the Russian civil servant and landowner of Polish descent Josif Florovich Dolivo-Dobrovolsky and Olga Mikhailovna Jewreinova from an old Russian noble family in Gatchina near Saint Petersburg. He spent his school days in Odesa, where his father was transferred in 1872. After secondary school he went at the age of 16 to the Riga Polytechnic, a college founded by Baltic Germans, teaching in German language. At the end of the 1870s, after a series of assassination attempts and finally the murder of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, a wave of anti-Polish repression broke out, with which all progressively oriented students were expelled from their university, which was equivalent to a study ban in all of Russia. Among them was Dolivo-Dobrovolsky.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.