Research Center named after M.V. Keldysh (Keldysh Center, part of the Roscosmos State Corporation) proudly bears the name of three times Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of Lenin and State Prizes, President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1961-1975) Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh, who for 15 years was the head and scientific director of NII-1 (now the Keldysh Center).
M.V. Keldysh showed up in grades 7-8, teachers already then noted his outstanding abilities in the exact sciences. In 1927 he entered the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow State University. In 1931 he began to work at TsAGI. In 1935 he was awarded the scientific degree of candidate of physical and mathematical sciences without defense, in 1937 – the degree of candidate of technical sciences and the title of professor in the specialty “aerodynamics”, in 1938 Keldysh defended his doctoral dissertation. 1946 – M.V. Keldysh became an academician, and already in 1961 he headed the USSR Academy of Sciences.
In the pre-war years and during the Great Patriotic War, Keldysh was actively involved in preventing aircraft destruction, for which in April 1942 he was awarded the Stalin Prize of the II degree. During the war years, along with scientific and experimental research, he was engaged in the implementation of the developed recommendations in aircraft design bureaus and aircraft factories. The works of M.V. Keldysh in the field of aviation contributed to obtaining significant technical advantages of our country during the war.
In the post-war work on the creation of a nuclear missile shield, Keldysh together with S.P. Korolev and I.V. Kurchatov took part both as the leader of large teams and as the author of many scientific and technical ideas and computational methods. With the direct participation of M.V. Keldysh, the world’s first intercontinental missile was launched. He was one of the initiators of the creation of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, headed a department at Moscow State University, created the Institute of Biomedical Problems, founded the Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (now the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences) and became its permanent director.
The identification of new scientific and technical problems, the development of space technology, the formation of complex scientific and technical programs, flight control issues – this is not a complete list of problems that were part of the circle of Keldysh’s activities. Scientific interests of M.V. Keldysh – not only mathematics and mechanics, but also such areas as cybernetics, quantum electronics, molecular biology and genetics. Keldysh was actively involved in solving the problems of nuclear energy.