Alexander Andreyevich
Samarsky
1919-2008
Alexander Andreyevich Samarsky was an outstanding Soviet and Russian mathematician, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), and one of the founders of the national school of computational mathematics and mathematical modeling. He was awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor (1979). He was born on February 19, 1919, on the Khutor Svystuny farmstead. Having lost his parents early, he was raised by his older sisters. He graduated with a gold medal from the A.P. Chekhov School in Taganrog (1936) and enrolled in the Faculty of Physics at Moscow State University (MSU). At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 1941, he volunteered for the front. He took part in the defense of Moscow and was seriously wounded. After treatment, he worked as a schoolteacher in the Krasnoyarsk Krai. In 1943, he returned to Moscow to complete his education. He graduated from MSU in 1945 and became a postgraduate student under the supervision of Academician A.N. Tikhonov. He defended his doctoral dissertation in 1957. He became a Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1966) and a Full Member (Academician) of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1976). He was a professor at Moscow University from 1958. In 1982, he founded and headed until the end of his life the Department of Computational Methods at the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics of MSU. He was also the head of the Department of Mathematical Modeling at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). Under his leadership in 1986-1987, a nationwide program for mathematical modeling was developed, and in 1990, the Institute of Mathematical Modeling of the USSR Academy of Sciences (RAS) was established, which he headed. A.A. Samarsky was a leading specialist in the fields of computational mathematics, mathematical physics, and the theory of mathematical modeling. He is the creator of the theory of operator-difference schemes and the general theory of stability of difference schemes. From the late 1940s, together with A.N. Tikhonov, he conducted the first direct calculations of nuclear and thermonuclear explosion yields in the USSR, which laid the foundations for mathematical modeling of complex physical processes. His work was pioneering in the field of parallel computing. From the 1960s, research on laser thermonuclear fusion, gas dynamics, plasma physics, and nuclear energy was conducted under his leadership. He is a co-author of the scientific discovery known as the T-Layer Effect (1965). He authored over 500 scientific papers and more than 30 monographs and textbooks, many of which have become classics (Equations of Mathematical Physics with A.N. Tikhonov, Theory of Difference Schemes, Introduction to Numerical Methods). He founded one of the leading scientific schools. Among his students are dozens of doctors and candidates of sciences, academicians, and corresponding members of the RAS. His scientific ideas continue to be developed in Russia and many countries worldwide. In memory of Academician A.A. Samarsky, a street in Moscow is named after him.
Address: Moscow, Akademika Samarskogo St.
