Mstislav Keldysh: biography, family, photo

Keldysh Mstislav Vsevolodovich (Russian nationality) was a Soviet scientist in the field of mathematics and mechanics, an academician and president of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He played a key role in the Soviet space program.

Son of a talented father

Keldysh's father Vsevolod Mikhailovich was a military engineer-builder, who graduated from the Riga Polytechnic Institute. There he married Maria Alexandrovna Skvortsova, who dedicated herself to raising children. Her father was a general of artillery, from the nobility. Father Vsevolod Mikhailovich was a military doctor in the rank of general, also from the nobility. Keldysh was always proud of his noble origin, which created him problems in the communist country. Because of the nature of the work of Vsevolod Mikhailovich, the family traveled to different cities. He lectured at technical institutes and took part in the design and construction of the Moscow metro and the Moscow-Volga canal.

Keldysh Mstislav Vsevolodovich: Biography

Keldysh Mstislav was one of seven children. Mother taught them German and French, and also instilled a love of music. His sister Lyudmila became a famous mathematician, and brother Yuri - a musicologist.

Keldysh Mstislav Vsevolodovich, whose family moved to Riga in 1909, where his father lectured at the Polytechnic Institute, was born on 10.02.1911. In 1915 the German army invaded Latvia and the personnel of the Riga Polytechnic Institute was evacuated to Moscow. Here, the family experienced hardship, living outside the city for several years, but parents loved classical music and often attended concerts in the city. The children remembered one day in 1917, when their mother fed the whole family with fried onions, since there was no other food. By the end of 1918 the family moved to Ivanovo-Voznesensk, as his father began to teach at the institute, to which the Riga Polytechnic Institute was attached.

Study in Moscow

In 1923, the family moved to Moscow, and Mstislav, who was 12 years old, attended school number 7 in Krivoarbatsky Lane. The boy, in appearance and behavior reminiscent of a gypsy woman, was mischievous and quarrelsome.

Keldysh was proud of his noble lineage, although it would be easier for him if he hid it. In official forms, he always recorded "social origin - noble", so in 1927 he was denied admission to the Institute of Civil Engineers.

Senior sister Lyudmila, contrary to the wishes of her father, who saw in the son of an engineer, persuaded him to study mathematics. Mstislav entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Moscow State University and finished it on July 24, 1931. At the urgent recommendation of the teacher Keldysh Lavrentiev, the talented graduate was distributed to the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute.

Work in TsAGI

In TsAGI, excellent conditions for research were created. Here Keldysh met Leonid Sedov, with whom he established close scientific cooperation and friendship, which influenced the future fate of the scientist.

In 1934-37 a series of articles on aerogidromechanics was published, the author of which was Keldysh Mstislav Vsevolodovich. The growth of the talented scientist began with the solution of one of the aviation problems of that time - sudden strong vibrations that could destroy the aircraft. His theoretical work helped overcome this problem. In addition, he conducted research for his doctoral dissertation on the use of polynomial series for the representation of harmonic functions and a complex variable, protected by him in 1938.

Keldysh Mstislav Vsevolodovich: family and his children

In 1938, after long courtship for a married woman, Keldysh married Stanislav Valerianovna. The next year he had a daughter, and in 1941 - son Peter. His son graduated from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, and his daughter later worked in the Keldysh Museum.

Talented mathematician

Keldysh continued his studies and often collaborated with his former teacher, Mikhail Lavrentiev. One of the topics he was interested in at the time was Dirichlet's problem.

Mstislav Keldysh was a talented mathematician in the theory of differential equations. He made a particularly fundamental contribution to the applied branches of aerodynamics. He was the chief theorist-advisor to the government and the organizer of computational work related to jet engines and space in the 1940s and 1960s.

The problem of aircraft vibration was just one of the first tasks he worked on. The second related problem was the jolting that often occurred in the front landing gear of an airplane when it landed. Here, the experience gained in solving the vibration problem was useful to him, and his solution to the shimmy problem, together with detailed instructions for engineers on how to eliminate it, was described in a 1945 paper. Working in Zhukovsky TsAGI, he did not leave the Mathematical Institute, having headed the Department of Mechanics from its inception in April 1944 to 1953.

Examples of the works of this period, which he undertook at the Steklov Institute: "On the mean square approximation by polynomials of functions of a complex variable" (1945), "On the interpolation of entire functions" (1947). It should be noted that, although these papers are related to abstract mathematics, Keldysh's interest in these problems has come about thanks to the ideas that originated in solving applied mathematical problems.

Space and nuclear weapons

After the Second World War, Mstislav Keldysh more and more engaged in the management of major research projects that were implemented in the USSR. In 1946, he left TsAGI to become the head of the Jet Research Institute and held this position for nine years.

He was vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1961-62 and its president in 1962-75. At the celebration of his 60th birthday in 1971, he said that he regretted stopping scientific research and focusing on management and administration. Nevertheless, he played an important role in the development of Soviet nuclear weapons, as well as space research programs. For example, he was one of three scientists who proposed the Soviet space satellite program in 1954, and in 1955 he became chairman of the commission set up to monitor the program. The first successful launch of the satellite in 1957 marked the beginning of an intensive space research program, and Keldysh was involved in this through a number of different organizations, such as the department of applied mathematics headed by him.

Work in the Academy of Sciences

In 1959, the Interdepartmental Scientific and Technical Council was created, the head of which was Mstislav Keldysh.

The biography of the scientist was marked by his stay at the post of president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he managed to carry out serious reforms. In particular, the CPSU rejected genetics, because it did not correspond to its ideology, and instead supported politically correct, but anti-scientific theories of Trofim Lysenko. In 1964, when his colleague Nikolai Nuzhdin was proposed to full members of the Academy, Andrei Sakharov, a colleague of the scientist on the development of nuclear weapons, opposed. The candidacy was rejected, and Keldysh contributed to the creation of conditions for the development of science without political interference, which in the political situation that existed then in the USSR was extremely difficult.

In 1975, for health reasons, Mstislav Keldysh resigned as president of the Academy. It is believed that this was partly due to fatigue, in part because of the stress caused by difficulties in protecting scientific ideals in a situation where science was used as the main tool of political struggle. Keldysh died on 24.06.78 and was buried with honor in the necropolis near the Kremlin wall.

Government awards

Keldysh received many awards in his country, and from foreign countries. He was awarded the State Prize (1942) and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1943) for working on the vibration of aircraft. In 1946, he was awarded another State Prize for work on the Shimmi.

In 1943 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences and a full academician three years later. In 1956 he received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for solving the problems of defense and the following year received the Lenin Prize. In 1961, he again became the Hero of Socialist Labor, this time for his work on missiles and the "East", the world's first manned spacecraft carrying Yuri Gagarin on board. Six times he was awarded the Order of Lenin and several times with medals.

World Recognition

Keldysh was a member of many academies: the Mongolian (1961), Polish (1962), Czech (1962), Romanian (1965), German (1966), Bulgarian (1966), Hungarian (1970) Academies of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1966 ) And was elected an honorary member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on July 1, 1968. He also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Warsaw.

Finally, he was elected to the Central Committee of the CPSU (1961) and a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1962). In addition, in his honor was named the lunar crater and a small planet, discovered in 1973.