Biography
Dollezhal was born in Omelnik in Ekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire (now in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine), on 27 October 1899.: 22 According to the GlobalSecurity.org investigations, Dollezhal was of Czech origin—his grandfather, Ferdinand Dollezhal, a Czech, was also an engineer who married a Russian woman in the middle 19th century. In 1917, he attended the Bauman Moscow State Technical University (MVTU) where he studied heat engines, thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, electronics, heat exchanger and refrigeration under Nikolay Zhukovsky.: 22 In 1923–24, Dollezhal earned his engineer's degree and worked with Moscow's authorities to rehabilitate the civil engineering and transportation infrastructure.: 22
While teaching at MVTU, he joined PJSC Heat and Power (which later was subsumed in Narkomtiazhprom) and worked with Soviet establishment to design new heat engines and turbines under the GOELRO program.: 22 In 1929–30, Dollezhal visited various factories in Germany and Austria under the sponsorship of Supreme Economic Council.: 22 Upon returning, he soon fell under the espionage investigations by Soviet establishment and was imprisoned until being acquitted in 1932. From 1932 to 1943, Dollezhal worked with Soviet bureaucracy, serving their chief design engineer, and oversaw many of the nitrogen production factories in Russia and Ukraine, and filled positions by hiring graduates of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute.: 23
Until 1946, Dollezhal was completely unaware of Soviet program of nuclear weapons and it was Nikita Khrushchev who had assigned Dollezhal to Laboratory No. 2 to build a plutonium production reactor.: 24 Dollezhal supported the Soviet program and designed the first reactors (based on American designs), graphite moderated types A and AI, that produced plutonium used in Joe 1 nuclear test of 1949 and subsequent nuclear weapons deployment.: 50 After 1950, Dollezhal founded the NIKIET on nuclear marine propulsion. His first proposal, Type AM, was not practical for marine uses but became the core of the first nuclear power plant in Obninsk, commissioned in 1954. In the same year, he produced a viable draft of a light water submarine reactor.
Dollezhal pioneered the concept of the heavy liquid metal-cooled reactor, focusing initially on liquid lead-bismuth eutectic cooling for the early Soviet military and naval propulsion programs, which predated the widespread adoption of pressurized water technology. Under his leadership, the institute developed these compact liquid metal systems for experimental and frontline nuclear submarines, such as the Project 645 K-27 and the Alfa class, laying the definitive groundwork for modern lead-cooled fast reactor designs. Only later did his firm expand into pressurized water systems, leading to numerous military and civilian VVER-type designs. In 1957, the Dollezhal Institute launched their first dual-use powerplant, Type EI, and seven years later, the first truly industrial Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station. While Anatoly Aleksandrov held the primary design patent and acted as the scientific supervisor for the RBMK, Dollezhal's design bureau (NIKIET) served as the chief engineering architect responsible for bringing both the VVER and RBMK reactor types into physical production.
Russia
Merit for the Fatherland 
USSR State Prize
Lenin Prize