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CONFIDENTIAL USSR

Head, Problems Laboratory of Economic-Mathematical Methods and Operations Research, Institute of Management of the National Economy

An internationally recognized creative genius in the fields of mathematics and the application of electronic computers to economic affairs, Academician Leonid Kantorovivch (pronounced kahntuhROHvich) has worked at the Institute of Management of the National Economy since 1971. He has been involved in advanced mathematical research since the age of 15; in 1939 he invented linear programming, one of the most significant contributions to economic management in the twentieth century. Kantorovichc has spent most of his adult life battling to win acceptance for his revolutionary concept from Soviet academic and economic bureaucracies; the value of linear programming to Soviet economic practices was not really recognized by his country's authorities until 1965, when Kantorovich was awarded a Lenin Prize for his work. International recognition came in October 1975, when the mathematician was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics jointly with T. C. Koopmans, a Dutch-born American economist who discovered the same concept independently a few years after Kantorovich.

In addition to his mathematical research, Kantorovich has been directly involved in developing improved designs for high-speed digital computers, an activity apparently motivated by the Soviet Union's need for improved computers in solving large economic planning problems.

The Institute of Management of the National Economy

The Institute of Management of the National Economy was established to train high-level economic and industrial administrators in modern methods of management, production organization and the use of economic-opened in early 1971. Premier Aleksey Kosygin and Party Secretary Andrey Kirilenko attended the ceremonies, thus suggesting the importance that the Soviet Government and Party attach to the application of modern management techniques to Soviet industrial administration and economic planning.