Mikhail Trofimovich Zarochentsev

M. T. Zarochentsev, a prominent specialist in refrigeration, was born on 18 September 1879. His career in refrigeration engineering began even before graduation from the Institute of Transportation in Moscow in 1909. He participated in the work of the International Congresses of Refrigeration in Paris (1908), Vienna (1910), London (1924), and Rome (1928), and was one of the founders of the Russian Refrigeration Association. Editor of a scientific periodical on refrigeration in Russia, he also authored numerous books on the subject, such as Kholodil'noe dielo (Moscow, 1911), Kholod v plodovodstvie (Simferopol', 1911), and Ledniki (Moscow, 1912).

During the First World War, as consultant to the Ministries of Agriculture and Transportation, he oversaw the construction of numerous packing houses, cold storage facilities, and thousands of refrigerated railway cars. Following the Revolution, he spent two years in France before becoming general manager of the Estonian packing house A/S Külmetus from 1922 to 1927. Continuing scientific work on refrigeration in France and Great Britain in 1928-1930, he saw that without larger capital investment than that available in Europe, his plans would remain unrealizable. In 1931 he proceeded to America to interest investors in what would become known as the Z process of quick freezing. As vice-president of the American Z Corporation, and an official of Z-Pack Corporation and National Frosted Foods Sales Corporation, Zarochentsev became one of the leading figures in refrigeration into the early 1950s, when he retired.

Detailed processing and preservation microfilming for these materials were made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by matching funds from the Hoover Institution and Museum of Russian Culture. The grant also provides for depositing a microfilm copy in the Hoover Institution Archives. The original materials and copyright to them (with some exceptions) are the property of the Museum of Russian Culture, San Francisco.

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