Alexey Andreevich Lyapunov (russian: Алексе́й Андре́евич Ляпуно́в; 25 September 1911 – 23 June 1973) was a Soviet mathematician and an early pioneer of computer science. One of the founders of

Soviet cybernetics Cybernetics in the Soviet Union had its own particular characteristics, as the study of cybernetics came into contact with the dominant scientific ideologies of the Soviet Union and the nation's economic and political reforms: from the unmitigat ...

, Lyapunov was member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a specialist in the fields of real function theory, mathematical problems of

cybernetics Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...

, set theory, programming theory,

mathematical linguistics Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, computational linguistics d ...

, and

mathematical biology Mathematical and theoretical biology, or biomathematics, is a branch of biology which employs theoretical analysis, mathematical models and abstractions of the living organisms to investigate the principles that govern the structure, development a ...

Biography

Composer Sergei Lyapunov, mathematician Aleksandr Lyapunov, and philologist Boris Lyapunov were close relatives of Alexey Lyapunov. In 1928, Lyapunov enrolled at Moscow State University to study mathematics, and in 1932 he became a student of Nikolai Luzin. Under his mentorship, Lyapunov began his research in

descriptive set theory In mathematical logic, descriptive set theory (DST) is the study of certain classes of "well-behaved" subsets of the real line and other Polish spaces. As well as being one of the primary areas of research in set theory, it has applications to ot ...

. He became world-wide known for his theorem on the range of an atomless vector-measure in finite dimensions, now called the Lyapunov Convexity Theorem. From 1934 until the early 1950s, Lyapunov was on the staff of the

Steklov Institute of Mathematics Steklov Institute of Mathematics or Steklov Mathematical Institute (russian: Математический институт имени В.А.Стеклова) is a premier research institute based in Moscow, specialized in mathematics, and a part ...

. When Mstislav Keldysh organized the Department of Applied Mathematics (now the M.V. Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics) he suggested Lyapunov to lead its work on programming. In 1954 A.A. Lyapunov was invited by A.I. Kitov (scientific director of the Computing Center No. 1 of the USSR Ministry of Defense) to this computing center as head of the laboratory. A.A. Lyapunov worked at this military computing center until 1960. In 1961, Lyapunov moved to the Institute of Mathematics of the Siberian Division of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the Sobolev Institute of Mathematics), where he founded the department of cybernetics. At Novosibirsk State University, he founded the Department of Theoretical Cybernetics and the Laboratory of Cybernetics at the Institute of Hydrodynamics of the Siberian Division of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the Lavrentiev Institute of Hydrodynamics) which he led until the end of his life. In 1964, Lyapunov was elected a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and joined the Division of Mathematics. He was awarded the Order of Lenin. In 1996, he was awarded the IEEE Computer Society's Computer Pioneer Award.

References

Biography of Lyapunov

External links

*
A. A. Lyapunov (on his 60th birthday)

S. Kutateladze "Lyapunov's convexity theorem, zonoids, and bang-bang"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lyapunov, Alexey Soviet mathematicians 1911 births 1973 deaths Novosibirsk State University academic personnel Soviet cyberneticists Alexey Moscow State University alumni Scientists from Moscow