Memorial of Mstislav Keldysh

This is the memorial of Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh (10 February 1911 – 24 June 1978) who was a Soviet scientist in the field of mathematics and mechanics, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1946), President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1961–1975), three times Hero of Socialist Labor (1956, 1961, 1971), fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1968). He was one of the key figures behind Soviet space program. Among scientific circles of USSR Keldysh was known with epithet the Chief Theoretician in analogy with epithet the Chief Designer used for Sergey Korolyov. Keldysh was born to a professional family of Russian nobility. His grandfather, Mikhail Fomich Keldysh (1839–1920), was a military physician, who retired with the military rank of a General. Keldysh’s grandmother, Natalia Keldysh (née Brusilova), was a cousin of famous general Aleksei Brusilov. Keldysh’s maternal grandfather, Alexander Nikolaevich Skvortsov, was a General of Infantry, a hero of the Caucasian War. Keldysh’s father, Vsevolod Mikhailovich Keldysh (1878–1965), was a civil engineer, Major General of the Engineering Service, and a full Professor (since 1918, teaching at the Kuybyshev Military Engineering Academy). He was a Distinguished Engineering Scientist of Soviet Union (Заслуженный деятель науки и техники СССР) since 1944. He was one of the authors of contemporary methods for calculating the strength of reinforced concrete, and a designer of the Moscow Canal and Moscow Metro projects. Several members of the Keldysh family were victims of political repressions. In the 1930s Keldysh’s uncle was sent to a labor camp on the White Sea-Baltic Canal construction site. In 1935 Keldysh’s mother was arrested but after a few weeks was released. It was a part of the campaign of collecting gold from the population, but after Keldysh’s father brought all the jewelry the family had, the unsatisfied NKVD officer returned all this garbage back. Keldysh’s brother Mikhail, a historian who specialized in Medieval Germany, was arrested in 1936 and executed in 1937 as a German spy. In 1938 another of Keldysh’s brothers, Alexander, was arrested as a French spy. Alexander was spared because of the slight liberalization of the repressions during the transfer of the NKVD leadership from Nikolai Yezhov to Lavrenty Beria, being acquitted in the court. The strongest influence on Keldysh was his older sister, Ljudmila Keldysh (1904–1976), a noted mathematician and Keldysh’s first teacher. Among her children (Keldysh’s nephews) are Leonid Keldysh, director of Lebedev Physical Institute and Sergei Novikov, a famous mathematician. Keldysh was born in 1911 in Riga. When he was four the family evacuated to Moscow during the First World War. In the first years of the Soviet Union he was refused entrance to an Institute of Civil Engineers because of his attachment to a noble family (1927). In the next years he managed to enter and graduate from the Physics and Mathematics department of the Mo