Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky

Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky was a Russian engineer who, while working in Germany in the late 1880s and early 1890s, developed the three-phase alternating current system, including the three-phase transformer, generator and induction motor, that became the standard method the world uses to generate, transmit and distribute electrical power. His three-phase system proved more efficient and used less conductor material than the single-phase or two-phase AC systems being developed elsewhere at the time, and his public demonstration of long-distance three-phase transmission at the 1891 Frankfurt International Electrotechnical Exhibition, sending power over 175 kilometers, proved the technology at a scale that persuaded utilities across Europe to adopt it. Three-phase power remains the basis of virtually every electrical grid in the world. His work is one of the foundational technical achievements underlying the modern electric power transmission system.