Early Life and Career
Leonid Plyushch was born into a Ukrainian working-class family in 1939 in Naryn, Kirghizia. His father worked as railway foreman, and was killed at the front in 1941. Leonid's childhood was marked by tuberculosis of the bone, which he contracted at age of 8.
Plyushch graduated Kiev University in 1962 with a degree in mathematics. In his last year of studies he become interested in mathematical modeling of biological systems, in particular mental illness, which he sought to model with the help of a computer (cybernetic machine in the terminology used in the Soviet Union). This proved too difficult of a task, but Plyushch published papers on modeling and regulating simpler biological systems like the blood sugar level. He was eventually hired at the Institute of Cybernetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which was often tasked with solving various problems for the Soviet space program.
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