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.
Activities and affiliations
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
Related historical events
Building Akademgorodok and the "Lavrentiev Triangle"
Lavrentiev's most widely known achievement is the founding of a new scientific center in Siberia. Together with the academicians Sergei Sobolev and Sergei Khristianovich he proposed a large complex of institutes covering several fields, an idea that drew a broad response from the scientific community; many prominent scholars announced they would go to Siberia to work there. On 18 May 1957 the USSR Council of Ministers ordered the creation of a Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk to strengthen research in the physical, technical, natural and economic sciences and to speed the development of the productive forces of Siberia and the Far East. A preparatory committee headed by Lavrentiev was formed; he became chairman of the branch that year and held the post until 25 November 1975.
Construction began in 1958 and the first institutes and housing were commissioned in 1959, the Institute of Hydrodynamics being completed first. A Council of Ministers decree of 17 October 1958 created Novosibirsk State University, where classes began on 29 September 1959; Lavrentiev lectured there from 1960. He pushed a scheme that interlocked research in the institutes, teaching at the university, and the industrial application of results, later known as the "Lavrentiev Triangle." Built on the principle of preserving as much of the natural setting as possible, with forest left standing, the settlement had by 1967 grown into a center with 11 academicians, 40 corresponding members, 125 doctors of science and about 1,400 candidates of science.
His Siberian years were nonetheless not untroubled. According to Sergei Khrushchev's recollections, he clashed with Nikita Khrushchev over the construction of the Baikal cellulose and paper combine and failed to win him over, the argument for cheap cellulose and paper prevailing. In his later years, as the film director Raisa Ernazarova recalled, he had repeatedly to overcome the resistance of the regional party committee in Novosibirsk. He died in Moscow on 15 October 1980 and was buried in the Southern cemetery in Novosibirsk.