Leonid Ivanovitch Sedov (14 November 1907 – 5 September 1999) was a leading physicist of the Soviet Union.
During WW2 he devised the so-called Sedov Similarity Solution for a blast wave. He was also the first chairman of the USSR Space Exploration program and broke first news of its existence in 1955. He was president of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) from 1959 to 1961. Until recently, it had been thought that Sedov was the principle Soviet engineer behind the Sputnik project.
Famous quotes containing the words leonid i:
“Leonid Ivanovich Shigaev is dead.... The suspension dots, customary in Russian obituaries, must represent the footprints of words that have departed on tiptoe, in reverent single file, leaving their tracks on the marble....”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)