Sergey Yablonsky
Encyclopedia
Sergey Vsevolodovich Yablonsky (Russian
: Серге́й Все́володович Ябло́нский, 6 December 1924 – 26 May 1998) was a Soviet
and Russia
n mathematician
, one of the founders of the Soviet school of mathematical cybernetics
and discrete mathematics
. He is the author of a number of classic results on synthesis, reliability, and classification of control systems , the term used in the USSR
and Russia
for a generalization of finite state automata, Boolean circuits and multi-valued logic circuits
. (The term is ambiguous, since conventionally in the West control systems is understood as an engineering discipline. The ambiguity stems from the fact that the names of the two disciplines that differ in Russian, namely Системы управления and Управляющие системы, are both translated into English as control systems.)
Yablonsky is credited for helping to overcome the pressure from Soviet ideologists against the term and the discipline of cybernetics
and establishing what in the Soviet Union
was called mathematical cybernetics as a separate field of mathematics
. Yablonsky and his students were ones of the first in the world to raise the issues of potentially inherent unavoidability of the brute force search for some problems, the precursor of the P = NP problem, though Gödel
's letter to von Neumann
, dated 20 March 1956 and discovered in 1988, may have preceded them.
, to the family of a professor of mechanics. His mathematical talents became apparent in early age. In 1940 he became the winner of the sixth Moscow secondary school mathematical olympiad.
's Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, Yablonsky, then 17, went to serve in the Soviet Army
, fighting in the second world war
as a member of the tank brigade 242. For his service he was awarded two Orders of the Patriotic War
, two Orders of the Red Star
, Order of Glory
of the 3rd class, and numerous medals. He returned to his study after the war has ended in 1945 and went on to graduate with distinction.
. This collaboration resulted in his first research paper, "On the converging sequences of continuous functions" (1950).
He joined the graduate program of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics in 1950 where his advisor was Pyotr Novikov. There Yablonsky's research was on the issues of the expressibility in mathematical logic. He approached this problem in terms of the theory of k-valued discrete functions
. Among the problems that were addressed in his PhD thesis titled "Issues of functional completeness in k-valued calculus" (1953) is the definitive answer to the question of completeness in 3-valued logic.
Starting from 1953, Yablonsky worked at the Department of Applied Mathematics of Steklov Institute of Mathematics
, that in 1966 became the separate Institute of Applied Mathematics
. Over the period of 1950s and 1960s, together with Alexey Lyapunov
, Yablonsky organized the seminar on cybernetics, showing his support to the new field of mathematics that had been a subject of a significant controversy fueled by Soviet ideologists. He actively participated in the creation of the periodical publication Problems of Cybernetics, with Lyapunov as its first editor-in-chief. Yablonsky succeeded Lyapunov as the editor-in-chief of Problems of Cybernetics in 1974 (the publication changed its name to Mathematical Issues of Cybernetics in 1989). In 1966 Yablonsky (together with Yuriy Zhuravlev and Oleg Lupanov
) was awarded Lenin Prize
for their work on the theory of control systems (in the discrete-mathematical sense, as explained above). In 1968 Yablonsky was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union (division of mathematics).
Yablonsky played an active role in the creation of the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics at Moscow State University
in 1970. In 1971 he became the founding head of the department of mathematical cybernetics (initially department of automata theory
and mathematical logic
) at the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics.
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
: Серге́й Все́володович Ябло́нский, 6 December 1924 – 26 May 1998) was a Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
, one of the founders of the Soviet school of mathematical cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
and discrete mathematics
Discrete mathematics
Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that are fundamentally discrete rather than continuous. In contrast to real numbers that have the property of varying "smoothly", the objects studied in discrete mathematics – such as integers, graphs, and statements in logic – do not...
. He is the author of a number of classic results on synthesis, reliability, and classification of control systems , the term used in the USSR
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
for a generalization of finite state automata, Boolean circuits and multi-valued logic circuits
Multi-valued logic
In logic, a many-valued logic is a propositional calculus in which there are more than two truth values. Traditionally, in Aristotle's logical calculus, there were only two possible values for any proposition...
. (The term is ambiguous, since conventionally in the West control systems is understood as an engineering discipline. The ambiguity stems from the fact that the names of the two disciplines that differ in Russian, namely Системы управления and Управляющие системы, are both translated into English as control systems.)
Yablonsky is credited for helping to overcome the pressure from Soviet ideologists against the term and the discipline of cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
and establishing what in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
was called mathematical cybernetics as a separate field of mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
. Yablonsky and his students were ones of the first in the world to raise the issues of potentially inherent unavoidability of the brute force search for some problems, the precursor of the P = NP problem, though Gödel
Kurt Gödel
Kurt Friedrich Gödel was an Austrian logician, mathematician and philosopher. Later in his life he emigrated to the United States to escape the effects of World War II. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the...
's letter to von Neumann
John von Neumann
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, geometry, fluid dynamics, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis,...
, dated 20 March 1956 and discovered in 1988, may have preceded them.
Childhood
Yablonsky was born in MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, to the family of a professor of mechanics. His mathematical talents became apparent in early age. In 1940 he became the winner of the sixth Moscow secondary school mathematical olympiad.
War
In August 1942, after completing his first year at Moscow State UniversityMoscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...
's Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, Yablonsky, then 17, went to serve in the Soviet Army
Soviet Army
The Soviet Army is the name given to the main part of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1992. Previously, it had been known as the Red Army. Informally, Армия referred to all the MOD armed forces, except, in some cases, the Soviet Navy.This article covers the Soviet Ground...
, fighting in the second world war
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
as a member of the tank brigade 242. For his service he was awarded two Orders of the Patriotic War
Order of the Patriotic War
The Order of the Patriotic War is a Soviet military decoration that was awarded to all soldiers in the Soviet armed forces, security troops, and to partisans for heroic deeds during the German-Soviet War, known by the former-Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War.- History :The Order was...
, two Orders of the Red Star
Order of the Red Star
Established on 6 April 1930, the Order of the Red Star was an order of the Soviet Union, given to Red Army and Soviet Navy personnel for "exceptional service in the cause of the defense of the Soviet Union in both war and peace". It was established by Resolution of the Presidium of the CEC of the...
, Order of Glory
Order of Glory
Established on 8 November 1943, the Order of Glory was an Order of the Soviet Union. It was awarded to non-commissioned officers and rank-and-file of the armed forces, as well as junior lieutenants of the air force, for bravery in the face of the enemy.The Order of Glory, which was modelled...
of the 3rd class, and numerous medals. He returned to his study after the war has ended in 1945 and went on to graduate with distinction.
Post-war period
Yablonsky graduated the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University in 1950. During his student years he worked under supervision of Nina BariNina Bari
Nina Karlovna Bari was a Soviet mathematician known for her work on trigonometric series. She was killed by a train in the Moscow Metro, and her colleagues speculated that she committed suicide, prompted by the death of her mentor Nikolai Luzin ten years earlier, a man who may have been her lover....
. This collaboration resulted in his first research paper, "On the converging sequences of continuous functions" (1950).
He joined the graduate program of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics in 1950 where his advisor was Pyotr Novikov. There Yablonsky's research was on the issues of the expressibility in mathematical logic. He approached this problem in terms of the theory of k-valued discrete functions
Multi-valued logic
In logic, a many-valued logic is a propositional calculus in which there are more than two truth values. Traditionally, in Aristotle's logical calculus, there were only two possible values for any proposition...
. Among the problems that were addressed in his PhD thesis titled "Issues of functional completeness in k-valued calculus" (1953) is the definitive answer to the question of completeness in 3-valued logic.
Starting from 1953, Yablonsky worked at the Department of Applied Mathematics of Steklov Institute of Mathematics
Steklov Institute of Mathematics
Steklov Institute of Mathematics or Steklov Mathematical Institute is a research institute based in Moscow, specialized in mathematics, and a part of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was established April 24, 1934 by the decision of the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in...
, that in 1966 became the separate Institute of Applied Mathematics
Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics
The Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences is a research institute specializing in computational mathematics....
. Over the period of 1950s and 1960s, together with Alexey Lyapunov
Alexey Lyapunov
Alexey Andreevich Lyapunov was a Soviet mathematician and early pioneer of computer science. One of the founders of cybernetics, Lyapunov was member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a specialist in the fields of real variable function theory, mathematical problems of cybernetics, set theory,...
, Yablonsky organized the seminar on cybernetics, showing his support to the new field of mathematics that had been a subject of a significant controversy fueled by Soviet ideologists. He actively participated in the creation of the periodical publication Problems of Cybernetics, with Lyapunov as its first editor-in-chief. Yablonsky succeeded Lyapunov as the editor-in-chief of Problems of Cybernetics in 1974 (the publication changed its name to Mathematical Issues of Cybernetics in 1989). In 1966 Yablonsky (together with Yuriy Zhuravlev and Oleg Lupanov
Oleg Lupanov
Oleg Borisovich Lupanov was a Soviet and Russian mathematician, dean of the Moscow State University's Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics , head of the Chair of Discrete Mathematics of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics .Together with his graduate school advisor, Sergey Vsevolodovich...
) was awarded Lenin Prize
Lenin Prize
The Lenin Prize was one of the most prestigious awards of the USSR, presented to individuals for accomplishments relating to science, literature, arts, architecture, and technology. It was created on June 23, 1925 and was awarded until 1934. During the period from 1935 to 1956, the Lenin Prize was...
for their work on the theory of control systems (in the discrete-mathematical sense, as explained above). In 1968 Yablonsky was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union (division of mathematics).
Yablonsky played an active role in the creation of the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics at Moscow State University
Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...
in 1970. In 1971 he became the founding head of the department of mathematical cybernetics (initially department of automata theory
Automata theory
In theoretical computer science, automata theory is the study of abstract machines and the computational problems that can be solved using these machines. These abstract machines are called automata...
and mathematical logic
Mathematical logic
Mathematical logic is a subfield of mathematics with close connections to foundations of mathematics, theoretical computer science and philosophical logic. The field includes both the mathematical study of logic and the applications of formal logic to other areas of mathematics...
) at the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics.