Mathematician who built Akademgorodok and pioneered explosive applications
When Lavrentiev told students about Poincaré being excused from navigation subjects and mused, "Perhaps we could excuse a few subjects here too," the entire lecture hall roared back: "History of the CPSU!"
A Soviet mathematician and hydrodynamicist who served as founding chairman of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1957–1975) and built Akademgorodok, the science city near Novosibirsk. He made fundamental contributions to the theory of quasiconformal mappings and fluid dynamics, contributed to shaped-charge theory during World War II, and pioneered the use of controlled explosions in construction. In 1953–1955 he served as deputy scientific director of the Arzamas-16 nuclear weapons institute, participated in early Soviet digital computer development, and helped found the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. An emblematic figure of the Khrushchev-era eastward expansion of Soviet science, he turned a vision of twenty research institutes and a university in one forest community into a working institution.
Career Timeline
- 1939–1941, 1945–1948Director, Mathematics Institute, Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences
- 1945–1948Vice-President, Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences
- 1950–1953Director, Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Technology
- 1953–1955Deputy Scientific Director, KB-11 (Arzamas-16)
- 1957–1975Founding Chairman, Siberian Branch, USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1957–1976Vice-President, USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1961–1976Candidate Member, CPSU Central Committee
- 1959–1966Professor, Novosibirsk State University