Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich

Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich was a Russian mathematician and economist who won the 1975 Nobel Prize in Economics, along with Tjalling Koopmans, for his research on the optimal allocation of resources. His 1959 book, "The Best Use of Economic Resources", described optimal ways to address problems of centrally planned economies, such as planning, pricing and decision making. He also made important contributions to functional analysis, approximation theory and operator theory and originated the technique of linear programming. 

Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich was born in Russia in January 1912 and after the death of his father, Vitalij Kantorovich, in 1922, the 10-year-old budding mathematician was raised alone by his mother, Paulina. Kantorovich enrolled in Leningrad State University at the age of 14 and graduated at the only the age of 18. As Kantorovich noted in his autobiography, he first began delving into the more abstract fields of mathematics during his second year of university. He noted that his most significant research during that time period centered around the analytical operations on sets and on projective sets and solving N.N. Lusin problems. Kantorovich went on to report his findings to the First All-Union Mathematical Congress in Kharkov, Russia in 1930. While at Congress, Kantorovich collaborated with other Soviet mathematicians, including S.N. Bernstein, P.S. Alexandrov, A.N. Kolmogorov and A.O. Gelfond.

He became a full professor 1934, and received his doctoral degree in 1935 while working at Leningrad University and in the Institute of Industrial Construction Engineering. Kantorovich later went on to work as the Director of the mathematical economics laboratory at the Moscow Institute of National Economic Management and as the head the research laboratory at the Institute of National Economy Control in Moscow. Kantorovich as married to a physician named Natalie in 1938. The pair had two children, who both entered the fields of mathematics as adults. He died in 1986.

Kantorovich himself noted that much of his work coincided with Russia’s expanding industrialization and as such, many of his mathematical findings were used in applied problems that arose from the expansion. Before his work, theoretical and applied research had nothing in common and he was able to successfully link the two. His 1951 book in particular introduced the concept of linear programming with the idea of dynamic programming. Much of his later work in computers and programming were used in economic study and design.