Biography
Kantorovich was born on 19 January, 1912, to a Russian Jewish family. His father was a doctor practicing in Saint Petersburg.
Kantorovich worked for the Soviet government. He was given the task of optimizing production in a plywood industry. He came up (1939) with the mathematical technique now known as linear programming, some years before it was reinvented and much advanced by George Dantzig. He authored several books including The Mathematical Method of Production Planning and Organization and The Best Uses of Economic Resources. For his work, Kantorovich was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1949.
After 1939, he became the professor of Military engineering-technical university. During the Siege of Leningrad, Kantorovich was the professor of VITU of Navy and in charge of safety on the Road of Life. He calculated the optimal distance between cars on ice, depending on thickness of ice and temperature of the air. In December 1941 and January 1942, Kantorovich personally walked between cars driving on the ice of Lake Ladoga, on the Road of Life, to ensure the cars did not sink. However, many cars with food for survivors of the siege were destroyed by the German air-bombings.
For his feat and courage Kantorovich was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, and was decorated with the medal For Defense of Leningrad.
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, which he shared with Tjalling Koopmans, was given "for their contributions to the theory of optimal allocation of resources."
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Portrait by Petrov-Vodkin. 1938.
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1976
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Original CIA file on Kantorovich, seized from the former US Embassy in Tehran.
Read more about this topic: Leonid Kantorovich
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