A large number of prominent people worked and studied at the KPI: E.O.Paton, the inventor of electric welding; M. I. Konovalov, a well-known chemist; I. P. Bardin, Ukraine's greatest metallurgist; A. M. Lyulka, USSR's premier designer of jet engines; rocket scientist Sergey Korolyov; creator of Sikorsky Helicopters, the well-known inventor Igor Sikorsky, well-known scientist in the field of fuel combustion and protection of the atmosphere from industrial pollution Isaak Sigal; Boris Yakovlevich Bukreev, a prominent mathematician known for his works in complex functions, differential equations, and non-Euclidean geometry. President of the First Exam Board in chemistry faculty was Dmitri Mendeleev.