Alexei Lyapunov

Alexei Lyapunov is born in Moscow (September 25 old style) into the ancient Ryazan noble family of the Lyapunovs, kin of the great mathematician Alexander Lyapunov, the composer Sergei Lyapunov. In the young Soviet state, noble descent is a social stain.

Lyapunov enters the physics and mathematics faculty of Moscow University.

Under the guidance and personal study programs of academician Nikolai Luzin, Lyapunov educates himself into a professional mathematician, producing early results in descriptive set theory and entering the circle of the legendary 'Lusitania'.

Lyapunov works at the Steklov Mathematical Institute (with interruptions) into the early 1950s. He becomes world-famous for the Lyapunov convexity theorem on vector measures.

Elena Lyapunova is one of two daughters who will make the family famous in Soviet genetics.

Natalya Lyapunova later becomes a doctor of biological sciences and a keeper of her father's legacy.

At the start of the war, Lyapunov is reportedly sent to construct defensive fortifications outside Moscow.

Lyapunov is called up in 1942; he goes to the front voluntarily.

In active artillery units, Lyapunov applies probability theory and mathematical statistics to gunnery and fire control in actual combat. He is said to have been decorated with the Order of the Red Star.

From 1945 to 1951 Lyapunov works at the artillery academy, first as laboratory assistant, later professor, where the young officer Anatoly Kitov becomes his student.

In his legendary open house in Moscow, Lyapunov leads a private mathematics seminar; Anatoly Kitov becomes its most active participant. The house teems with relatives, students, colleagues and front comrades: 'laughter reigned constantly', with charades and games spanning all generations.

In the 1952/53 academic year, Lyapunov begins teaching the fundamentals of programming at Moscow University. Among those shaped by it is Andrei Ershov, the future 'programmer No. 1' of the USSR.

Over ten years, Lyapunov's Big Seminar gathers mathematicians, economists, engineers, biologists, soldiers, linguists and philosophers: the birthplace of the first generation of Soviet cyberneticists.