The Legacy of Academician Glushkov at the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute

We bring to your attention the book of Mykhailo Zgurovsky "The Legacy of Academician Glushkov at the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute".

Co-authors:
N. M. Ausheva, S. V. Boychenko, S. O. Burian, V. V. Vanin, V. A. Voloshchuk,
O. Yu. Galkin, I. M. Dzhygyrey, I. A. Dychka, O. A. Zhuchenko, Yu. P. Zaichenko,
Ya. I. Kornaga, A. A. Melnychenko, O. M. Novikov, O. A. Pavlov,
V. D. Romanenko, O. A. Khalus

Reviewers:
I. V. Sergiyenko, Acad. of the NAS of Ukraine
O. M. Khimich, Acad.

INTRODUCTION

Cybernetics as an individual science was formed in the late 1940s. Its formation and development is closely related to the creation of electronic computing machines (ECM) and their expansion in the USA, Great Britain, and the USSR in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In the Soviet Union, a significant impetus for the further development of cybernetics was the creation of a small electronic computing machine (SECM) in Kyiv in 1947 – 1948 under the supervision of Academician S. O. Lebediev [1].

The government’s decision of 1955 to create a new academic institute in 1957 – the Computer Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR – was the consequence of this achievement. The activity of this Center, with its subsequent transformation into the Institute of Cybernetics of the AS of the Ukrainian SSR in 1962, became the initial stage of the development of cybernetics, computer engineering and informatics based on the combination of fundamental and applied research.

Being a leader of a new scientific field, Academician V. M. Glushkov perceived cybernetics as a science of management using computer technology, communication means, and mathematical methods of real-time processing of large arrays of information of arbitrary nature and conten. According to Academician V. M. Glushkov, these studies had to be carried out with the active cooperation of senior generation of specialists and young scientists.

For this reason, on Academician Glushkov’s initiative, in 1960, the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (KPI) started training specialists in computer engineering. In 1969, at Taras Shevchenko Kyiv University on the initiative
of V. M. Glushkov and the Dean of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, Prof. I. I. Lyashko, the Faculty of Cybernetics was founded, where training of specialists in computational mathematics began. Later, the training of specialists in computer engineering and computational mathematics was started in a number of other universities of Ukraine.