Aleksey Andreevich Lyapunov: Mathematician on the War

The article dwells on the wartime life of Aleksey Andreevich Lyapunov (1911-1973), a mathematician and a person of encyclopedic knowledge. The main source of the paper is Lyapunov's correspondence during 1941-1945. Lyapunov enriched science not only in the fields of the set theory, cybernetics and programming. His interests covered a wide range of problems in biology, geophysics, linguistics, philosophy, and pedagogic. Aleksey Andreevitch, a son of mathematician A.N. Lyapunov and a student of Academician N.N. Luzin, defended a PhD thesis and worked in the field of applications of the probability theory to the natural science and engineering. A nobleman by birth and a patriot, he rejected the opportunity to stay in reserve. He became a student of a military college, then a soldier and a platoon leader. After the end of the Second World War, he was a professor of the F. Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy. He defended his doctoral thesis in 1950. As an active advocate of cybernetics, Lyapunov consolidated his followers and opened an interdisciplinary seminar on the problems of cybernetics and physiology at Moscow State University. In 1961, he moved from Moscow to Novosibirsk and became the head of the Cybernetics Department in the Institute of Mathematics of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. A.A. Lyapunov was a founder and a scientific supervisor of the Physics and Mathematics School of Novosibirsk State University. In 1964, he was elected to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR as a corresponding member. In 1996, he was awarded a Computer Pioneer Medal. A.A. Lyapunov was drafted into the Army on March 17, 1942. He became a student of the Military Infantry School in the city of Vladimir. There was little demand for his mathematical skills but he took every opportunity to work in his field. His life in the military school was not easy as he was not fit for regular physical exercise. Lyapunov wished to go to artillery, because he realized that he would be more useful there as a mathematician. When appointed a leader of the topography and calculation artillery platoon, Lyapunov approved himself as an expert in the battle for Crimea. He discovered the influence of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly on the gun-laying tools and performed the necessary calculations that had been previously ignored. Having solved the problem in the field of the technical cybernetics, Lyapunov took his first step toward his post-war future. Getting familiarized with the papers of American scientists in cybernetics brought Lyapunov and his colleagues to the research in this field of science. Scientists A.N. Kolmogorov, A.I. Berg, I.A. Poletayev and A.I. Kitov, among others who had gained theoretical and practical skills in the management of automatic control mechanisms during the war, led Soviet cybernetics and influenced the development of other important areas in science and engineering.

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