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Semyon Yakovlevich Plotkin was born in 1906, Melitopole, Ukraine. In 1931 he received the degree of Chemical Engineering at the M. V. Lomonosov Moscow Institute of Fine Chemical Technology, where he was asked for administration works firstly as the director of the Institute and then as a member of the All-Union Committee for High School problems. During all his life Prof. Plotkin successfully combines administrative, scientific, pedagogical, and journalistic activities. He defended his MSc. Thesis in 1949, which presented a basis for his further work with Grigorii V. Samsonov on the creation of the well-known monograph „Iron Powder Production.“
Somewhere in 1950. Prof. Plotkin started investigating, with profound interest, problems concerning the history of powder metallurgy and proved to be one of the leading experts in the problems of hard alloys and powder metallurgy. He was an outstanding professor, editor in chief of the journal “History of Natural Sciences and Technique”. He had published more than fifty (50) papers including a monograph on P. G. Sobolevski who has been recognized as a founder of modern powder metallurgy, five (5) books, over 300 articles, essays, sketches, and reviews on various issues of national and international journals in science, education, and scientific history writing.
An extensive erudition characterizes S. Ya. Plotkin, while the qualities of both an expert investigator in the field of powder metallurgy and those of historians of science are closely united in his personality.
Semyon Ya. Plotkin was a member of the Journalist’s Union of the USSR and Honorary worker of Culture of the Russian Federation. For contribution to the development of powder metallurgy cermets and its history S.Ya. Plotkin was first elected a member and then honorary member for the International Institute of Science of Sintering in 1981.
He died on 6 March 2000, two days before his 94th birthday in Moscow, Russia.