1905–1994
○ Natural causes
An automation scientist who pressed technology toward economic reform
"It is time to leave outdated forms of economic management based on directive norms and move to a simpler, cheaper, and more effective economic regulation of enterprises."
Vadim Trapeznikov was an electrical engineer and automation scientist who sought to change Soviet production technology and management together. He argued that automation could not take root while enterprises were bound by rigid plan indicators, and in 1964 he published a Pravda article criticizing directive economic management. The intervention connected automation research to the organization of enterprise activity and broadened the intellectual climate in which the Kosygin reform moved from debate toward implementation.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1928–1933Researcher, All-Union Electrotechnical Institute
- 1933–1938Chief engineer of automation workshops, Orgenergo
- 1938–1941Head of the automation laboratory, Central Research Institute of the Cotton Industry
- 1941–1951Researcher and laboratory head, Institute of Automation and Telemechanics
- 1951–1987Director, Institute of Automation and Telemechanics
- 1960–1990Full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences; head of general control problems at Moscow State University
- 1965–1978First deputy chairman, State Committee for Science and Technology
Related historical events
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarDefense-production automation researcherDuring the war, automatic devices for defense production were developed under his leadership.
- 1965–1970The Kosygin Reformautomation specialist who backed reformIn August 1964 he wrote in Pravda that the time had come to discard obsolete forms of economic management based on directive norms.
Integrated design and the aggregate principle in automation
In 1941 Trapeznikov joined the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Automation and Telemechanics and established a laboratory for technical means of automation. During the war, automatic devices for discrete processes in defense production were developed under his leadership. After the war he turned to automating mass-production processes and to electrohydraulic regulators. In 1950 he proposed and substantiated an aggregate principle for automation devices and systems, in contrast to the then-dominant principle of a basic design. It allowed ready-made devices with different functions to be combined flexibly while reducing the range of components; it later became a principal organizing method for automation equipment in the USSR. He also argued that control systems should be designed from the outset together with the technological processes they controlled, and that interconnected production units should be managed by unified systems. After becoming director of the institute in 1951, he promoted work combining theoretical research with automation of specific industrial processes.