Israel Yakovlevich Akushsky was born on July 30, 1911 in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, into the family of the city's head rabbi. While still a student at Moscow State University, Akushsky started working as a data analyst at the University's Mathematics and Mechanics Scientific Research Institute and later under Lazar Aronovich Lusternik – the creator of functional analysis – at the Steklov Mathematics Institute. At that time, calculation technology attracted few people, so Lusternik was an exception among mathematicians. However, the approaching war forced the rapid development of calculation technology, and the Steklov Institute received a government order to compute trajectory tables for artillery and navigation tables for military aviation. In 1939, when the Soviet Union's first calculation laboratory was founded at the Steklov, Akushsky was ordered to manage it. The volume of planned calculations was enormous, so naturally the question emerged – what instruments do we use in order to complete these tasks on time? Back then, arithmometers, abacuses, and slide-rules were the primary tools: the Soviet Union had only just begun to manufacture punch-card calculating machines. By then, IBM had already developed reliable punch card analytical machines (PCAMs) and in 1940 brought a set to Moscow to display at the State Polytechnical Museum. IBM did not produce the machines for sale, only for lease. Since the Soviet government could not buy them at that time, Akushsky managed to have some of the machines moved from the Polytechnical Museum to the Steklov Institute, where he established the country's first mechanical calculation laboratory – the precursor of electronic computer centers.
Akushsky recalled:
In 1942, the IBM Company asked the Polytechnical Museum to return the machines to the United States. Naturally, the Museum managers sent a letter to the Mathematics Institute and I was forced to come up with an answer. Returning the machines was out of the question, because it would deprive the Institute of the ability to perform important defense work.
I replied that due to wartime conditions, the government had ordered to have all valuable equipment evacuated to the far regions of the Soviet Union, were it would be safe from bombings, and at this time, we were not able to determine exactly where the equipment was located.
After the start of the war, the greater part of the Institute wasevacuated, but some of the staff, including Akushsky, remained in Moscow and worked for the Army, computing navigation tables for aviation.
Mikhail Gromov – the comrade-in-arms to the legendary pilot Valery Chkalov[12] – visited the institute on several occasions, going directly to Akushsky for the latest results. When it was suggested that he visit the institute's top managers instead, he jokingly answered that he had enough managers of his own and would obtain the results directly from Akushsky. Sometimes, Gromov took Akushsky on short unexpected business trips; they would go out to the airfield and fly to a meeting near Saratov, the latest site for calculations. Akushsky would consult with the data analysts, check their work, and then return to Moscow the next morning.
Yet these were dangerous times. Once, in the middle of the night, Akushsky was arrested and taken to Lubyanka, the infamous KGB headquarters and prison in Moscow. His department manager had been taken there as well and they were both subjected to a ruthless interrogation:
"Are you responsible for the creation of the navigation tables for aviation flights?"
"Yes," they answered.
"Well, several days ago in the Far East, an aircraft didn't return from a special mission. We lost all radio contact with it, and if it's not found soon, you will be held responsible in accordance with war-time law."
When he got over the shock, Akushsky asked, "In the Far East?"
"Yes."
"Most likely, the navigator did not consider that crossing the 180th meridian requires a correction using the opposite sign! Do you have their flight plan?"
As soon as he received it, Akushsky calculated the possible trajectories of the aircraft, and using this data, the wreckage of the plane was found. The scientists were released with apologies.
Akushsky and his colleagues performed a tremendous amount of work right up to the end of the war. For example, they were given a special order to calculate fifty different round-trip flight plans between Moscow and Teheran. Later, they understood that it was for Stalin's flight to the "Big Three" (Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt) Teheran meeting in 1943. The relatively reliable American IBM equipment helped the laboratory successfully create the tables for flight plan angles and distances, especially for long-distance bomber aviation.
Akushsky worked with great enthusiasm, giving his all to his beloved work without any regard for time. The tables were published secretly by the Soviet Academy of Sciences. From the first months of the Great Patriotic War he became an indirect participant, assisting aircraft navigators to fly bombing missions over Berlin. A few months later, he was sent from besieged Moscow to the blockaded and starving city of Leningrad. There, he and his colleagues finished the work that they had started in Moscow, preparing calculation tables for the Naval radar systems.
At the end of 1943, Akushsky returned to Moscow. He briefed the Steklov Institute Director, Ivan Matveevich Vinogradov, about the work that they had done, and added that he would be like to quickly prepare for his Candidate's thesis on the problems of using analytical calculating machines for the solution of mathematical tasks (he was the first in the nation to propose and implement the binary system for calculations, which later became the basis for all computer technology, plus he developed the theory and calculating methods for radar navigation, surveillance and detection problems).
Vinogradov somberly replied, "I cannot release you from your laboratory duties right now. However, I'll inform you as soon as it is possible." Vinogradov always kept his word, and in February 1945, he called Akushsky to his office, saying, "I had a meeting with Marshal Zhukov[13], and the war is coming to an end. Now you can work on your dissertation!" He then ordered for Akushsky not be disturbed during day, with the exception of the first hour in the morning.
By May Akushsky's thesis was ready, and he informed the Director. Their conversation was brief, as usual:
"Well, it will be considered at the staff meeting. Your opponents will be Academicians Lavrentiev and Semendaev."
"But Lavrentiev takes a year to answer his letters. He'll delay the response preparation!"
"Don't worry. He'll do everything on time."
"But Semendaev is very jealous of me. I've already heard what he said about my work."
"He was speaking in the corridor. I dare him to try and say the same thing at the staff meeting."
At the end of June, the responses to his thesis came in; both were positive. Professor Semendaev furnished his response in person; he wanted Akushsky to read it immediately and then asked, "So, what do you think?"
Akushsky replied: "You have praised me too much!"
Akushsky's thesis defense was set for July 5, 1945 and was very successful, although not without some initial concern, because the board members were preparing to leave for their summer holidays. A few days before the defense, Akushsky shared his anxieties with Vinogradov, who smiled and slyly replied, "I promised that you'd have your Candidate's degree by the summer and I intent to keep my word, so calm down. Our accountant was given strict orders to delay holiday pay until July 5th!"
Academician Kolmogorov was one of Akushsky's strong supporters and was present at his thesis defense. During the war, Kolmogorov had been corresponding with the famous American scientist and cybernetics pioneer, Norbert Wiener. A short while after the defense, Kolmogorov asked Akushsky to prepare a paper based on his thesis and sent it to Wiener. In 1946, when Wiener visited the Soviet Union for the first time, he was already familiar with Akushsky's work, thanks to the article. Wiener spent all of his time at the Steklov Mathematics Institute speaking with Vinogradov and Akushsky and giving lectures on cybernetics. He pointedly ignored the invitation to visit the Institute of Philosophy, where at the time, they considered cybernetics a pseudo-science.
Even during the war, Lusternik organized and ran scientific seminars on calculation theory, in which Akushsky took an active part. At that time, Bruevich was the Board Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and regularly led seminars on precision mechanics. At the end of the war, the two seminars were combined to serve as a forum for questions regarding the development of computing machines. Participants discussed the necessity for organizing a new, separate institute. Soviet-made punch-card machines were not reliable enough, and suitable only for accounting work. Analogous computational means could not provide for the advancing requirements of science and technology. Since the ideas of creating digital computers were already circulating in both the Soviet Union and abroad, the President of the Academy of Sciences at the time, Academician Sergei Vavilov, passionately supported the idea of establishing an institute. Once he published an article about it in Pravda, the plan was promptly approved by the government. In 1948, when the Institute for Precision Mechanics was established at the Academy of Sciences, it initially included Lusternik's department from the Steklov Institute along with Akushsky's laboratory, Academician Bruevich's department from the Precision Mechanics and Machine Building Institute, and Isaac Brook's department from the Power Engineering Institute, although Brook did not formally move to the new institute.
Academician Bruevich was appointed Director of the new Institute for Precision Mechanics. One year later he was followed by Lavrentiev, and in 1952 upon Lavrentiev's recommendation, the institute's directorship was turned over to Lebedev.
Yet soon after this time, the artificially concocted "Jewish problem" began surfacing in the Soviet Union. [14] Akushsky remembers this meeting with Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov, the Communist Party Central Committee's Science Supervisor:
"How's the work going?" Zhdanov asked Akushsky.
"Somewhat ...uncomfortably," he answered.
"Why not pursue your research at another Republic's Academy? If you would like, I could recommend you to the President of Kazakhstan, Kunayev, as a very promising specialist who could lead the development of computational mathematics in the republic."
Akushsky understood this "recommendation" as a clear order to leave Moscow. He replied, "Thank you. I agree." And that is how the Alma-Ata period of his life began.
At the Academy of Sciences of Kazakhstan, Akushsky organized the laboratory of machine and computational mathematics that later became the Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics. At the same time, he lectured on the mathematics of calculations at Kazakhstan State University.
Between 1954 and 1956, Akushsky came up with an idea for creating a special computing system that would considerably accelerate the calculation process in computers. He dedicated the rest of his life to its realization. Back in Moscow late in 1956, Akushsky met with Mikhail Lesechko, the Minister of Industrial Machinery and Device Building whom he knew from before. Lesechko was very interested in computer technology and asked:
"What are you doing in Kazakhstan? You should return to Moscow and work at SKB-245."
Akushsky happily agreed. At SKB-245, Akushsky was appointed as a senior scientific staff member and later a lab manager of the mathematics department. At first, Akushsky worked on developing a computer that used a conventional system of calculation. However, his preference was to develop a system based on remainders [in Russian: Sistema schisleniya v ostatkakh, or SOK] and use it to create a computer.
In 1961, he met the Czech scientist Antonin Swoboda at a mathematical conference in Leningrad. They spend a lot of time discussing the contents of their respective presentations on the SOK. Akushsky quickly understood that he was much further ahead in his work than the Czech scientist. Obviously, Svoboda realized this also, because he replaced his original report with another one on the trinary system of calculation.
By 1957 the SKB-245 team consisted of Bazilevsky, Rameev, Yuri Schrader and Akushsky, who together started developing a computer based on a system of remainders. However, the project did not get very far, mainly because Akushsky was the only member of the team who strongly believed in the remarkable possibilities of the SOK; in 1960, when he was invited to lead a similar project at the Scientific Research Institute of Long-Distance Radio Communication, he agreed without hesitation.
The expected performance of the SOK computer was about 1.25 million operations per second, and it was successfully used in the national air defense system. This computer received a second life and was used up to the 1990s, thanks to integrated circuits.
In Czechoslovakia, the Epos computer was developed under Svoboda's supervision. It also used SOK technology, although it had lower operational speed and was practically never used.
Akushsky spent the latter part of his career working at the Zelenograd Scientific Center for Microelectronic Technology – just outside of Moscow, and I got to know him in the 1970s.
I visited Akushsky at his home several times, and met his wife Galina Petrovna, who was very involved with all of her husband's students and associates. They had no children of their own, and were like surrogate parents to all the young people who visited their home.
However, not all aspects of his life were pleasant, despite being able to patent many computational inventions in such leading countries as England, America and Japan. After Akushsky had already relocated to Zelenograd, an American became interested in collaborating to build a computer based on Akushsky's ideas and the latest cutting-edge American technology. Preliminary negotiations were underway and K.A. Valiyev, director of the Institute of Molecular Electronics, was preparing to work with modern microchips from the United States. Suddenly, Akushsky was called to meet with the "experts" (the KGB), who stated that "Zelenograd Scientific Center was not going to contribute to the intellectual enrichment of the West!" With this, all the work stopped. Unfortunately, it was not the only time when rudeness, ignorance or intrigue impeded the progress of technology and Akushsky's innovative ideas.
Dealing with his problems took their toll – he suffered a stroke, was hospitalized, and was forced to walk with a cane for a prolonged period of time. During my frequent visits, we took walks near his home and he told me lots of stories about the creation of Zelenograd, and the kindness of F. V. Lukin, Valiyev, and Malinin. He considered them the real "founders of the city," excellent scientists and planners. The only person, about whom he spoke with restraint, was Phillip George Staros.
Akushsky had the ability to find a common language and mutual understanding with all kinds of people – from the engineers to scientists at the Academy Presidium. Although he was not a Communist party member, he had a very good relationship with the party leadership in Zelenograd, even with the city administrators.
Akushsky was very disappointed that the Soviet computer technology was falling further and further behind their foreign competition, especially in the pace of development. At the same time, he understood that he and other Soviet scientists would not be able to help the Party machinery in this matter.
Akushsky died somewhat unexpectedly. On the night of April 2, 1992, as he got up from his bed, he fell and badly injured his head and leg. An ambulance took him to the hospital. Later in the day, when his wife visited, he seemed to be doing well. At the end of that day, he said he was tired and wanted to sleep. But by midnight, his condition had worsened. The head nurse called the doctor on duty, who wanted to perform an emergency surgery. But the head trauma turned out to be a mortal wound and they were not able to save him. His funeral at the central cemetery in Moscow was attended by many of his students and close friends.
[12] Chkalov made the first non-stop Moscow to Vancouver flight.
[13] Marshal George Zhukov was the Soviet chief military commander, responsible for most of the major Soviet victories during the Second World War, including the final capture of Berlin.
[14] The "Jewish Problem" refers to a period when the KGB and the First (Security) Department at every institute began to unofficially ban Jews from having access to all military and top-secret projects.