The method of the electric spark erosion developed by Drs. Boris and Natalia Lazarenko in 1943 is currently widely used in the world under the title „electrical machine discharging” (EDM). This method allows for manufacturing work pieces, components of practically any geometry. The physical nature of the EMD, as processing technique, ensures unique technological flexibility as related to both the surface shape and to the materials under processing.

 

Specialists in the area speak about five generations of installations, the latest being that with the PC control, used mostly for the manufacture of work pieces and components, first of all, for aeronautical, cosmic, and electronic equipment, making it possible to assure a total automation of the process. Evidently, the EDM and the equipment for its application were a breakthrough in the XX century engineering. 

 

One of the areas of the EDM application is alloying via electro- sparking, which has been more and more comprehensively developed at the Institute of Applied Physics of the ASM.

 

The appearance of a fundamentally novel method for materials processing has also found applications in arts. It is used for making drawings and inscriptions with an electrical pen not only on metallic surfaces but also on glass coated with a thin electrically conductive film. The most impressive inscriptions are those on oxidized metals. Drawings can be made by taking away (or even cutting) some metal or, inversely, by deposing certain metals on a surface: it depends on the polarity of the electrode-tool.

 

As a student at Lomonosov Moscow State University, Boris Lazarenko demonstrated a special interest in electricity, this being with him up to the very last days. Looks like the mother-nature kept in secret the electric sparking especially for Boris Lazarenko and he responded with a shared devotion. His enormous strivings, confidence, loyalty to the profession, and the gift of a researcher opened for him a wide window of opportunities so as to implement what others considered unrealizable or even impossible.

 

After graduation of the University in 1935, he started working at the Research Institute of the Ministry of electro-technical industry of the USSR. In 1955, the Central Research Laboratory in Electrical Processing of Materials was transferred to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1961, when the Academy of Sciences in Moldova was founded, a new phase in the further development and applications of the EDM was launched.

 

Being convinced in the exceptional properties of electricity, in 1965, Academician Lazarenko became the father-founder and the first Editor-in-Chief of the journal „Prelucrarea electrică a materialelor” (Electrical Processing of Materials).

 

During his latest period of scientific activity Academician Lazarenko was concerned with the behavior of live organisms in electric and magnetic fields. His destiny was generous to him in scientific respect, and his activity manifests itself through various new application areas of electricity.

 

Holding fond memories of a developer of the EDM method, the scientific workers have a profoundesteem and high appreciation of the activities and professionalism of a Person and Scientist whose whole life and scientific work represent important stages in the biography of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, of the Institute of Applied Physics of the ASM, and make up a golden page in the highly significant history book of science.