Mstislav Keldysh

67

Mstislav Keldysh : biography

10 February 1911 – 24 June 1978

Keldysh was 67 when he died. He was honoured with a state funeral and his ashes were buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis on Red Square.

Family

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 a small liberalization of the repressions during the transfer of the NKVD leadership from Nikolai Yezhov to Lavrenty Beria—he was 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.

Awards and honors

Keldysh was a member of many foreign academies of sciences, including the Mongolian Academy of Sciences (1961), Polish Academy of Sciences (1962), Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (1962), and Romanian Academy of Sciences (1965). He was also an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1966), Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1966), Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1970), and Royal Society of Edinburgh (1968), foreign corresponding member of the German Academy of Sciences (1966), and Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig (1966).

Keldysh was awarded the USSR State Prize (1942, 1946), Lenin Prize (1957), six Orders of Lenin, three other orders, numerous medals and four foreign orders.

The crater Keldysh on the Moon, and a research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh are named after him. A minor planet, 2186 Keldysh discovered in 1973 by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh, is named in his honor.