Victor Glushkov

Victor Mikhailovich Glushkov (Russian: Віктор Миха́йлович Глушко́в; August 24, 1923 – January 30, 1982) was a Ukrainian mathematician,[1] the founding father of information technology in the Soviet Union and one of the founding fathers of Soviet cybernetics.

Victor Glushkov
Postal stationery of the Soviet Union on the occasion of the 1st anniversary of Glushkov's death.
Born(1923-08-24)August 24, 1923
Rostov-on-Don, Russian SFSR, USSR
DiedJanuary 30, 1982(1982-01-30) (aged 58)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, USSR
Alma materRostov State University
Known forPioneer of Soviet Computing
Glushkov's construction algorithm
AwardsLenin Prize, USSR State Prizes,
IEEE Computer Pioneer Award
Scientific career
FieldsCybernetics, control theory
InstitutionsInstitute of Cybernetics, Kyiv
ThesisLocally Nilpotent Torsion-Free Groups with the Conditions of Breakage for Some Chains of Subgroups (1951)
Doctoral advisorSergei Chernikov

He was born in Rostov-on-Don, Russian SFSR, in the family of a mining engineer. Glushkov graduated from Rostov State University in 1948, and in 1952 proposed solutions to Hilbert's fifth problem and defended his thesis in Moscow State University.

In 1956 he began working with computers and worked in Kyiv as a Director of the Computational Center of the Academy of Science of Ukraine. In 1958 he became a member of the Communist Party. In 1962 Glushkov established the famous Institute of Cybernetics of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine and became its first Director.

He made contributions to the theory of automata. He and his followers (Kapitonova, Letichevskiy and other) successfully applied that theory to enhance construction of computers. His book on that topic "Synthesis of Digital Automata" became well known. For that work, he was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1964 and elected as a Member of the Academy of Science of USSR.

He greatly influenced many other fields of theoretical computer science (including the theory of programming and artificial intelligence) as well as its applications in the USSR. He published nearly 800 printed works.

One of his great practical goals was the creation of the National Automated System for Computation and Information Processing (OGAS), consisting of a computer network to manage the allocation of resources and information among organizations in the national economy, which would represent a higher form of socialist planning than the extant centrally planned economy. This ambitious project was ahead of its time, first being proposed and modeled in 1962. It received opposition from many senior Communist Party leaders who felt the system threatened Party control of the economy.[2] By the early 1970s official interest in this system ended.

Glushkov founded a Kyiv-based Chair of Theoretical Cybernetics and Methods of Optimal Control at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1967[3] and a Chair of Theoretical Cybernetics at Kyiv State University in 1969.[4] The Institute of Cybernetics of National Academy of Science of Ukraine, which he created, is named after him.

Honors and awards

See also

References
  1. Victor Glushkov in Great Soviet Encyclopedia
  2. Peters, Benjamin (2016). How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet. The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262034180.
  3. The history of the MIPT Division in Kyiv Archived 2007-08-14 at the Wayback Machine
  4. Malinovskiĭ, BN (1993). Academician V. Glushkov (in Russian). Kyiv: Naukova Dumka. ISBN 5-12-003983-9.
  5. Victor Glushkov Archived 2008-04-17 at the Wayback Machine. Site NASU
  6. Victor Glushkov. Site RAS
  7. http://www.leopoldina.org/en/members/list-of-members/member/3354/
  8. Computer Pioneer Recipients
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