In 1926, at the age of fourteen, Kantorovich began his studies at the Leningrad University. He graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics in 1930 and began his graduate studies. He graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy in 1935.
Gallery of Leonid Kantorovich
Kantorovich and his group mates in 1927.
Gallery of Leonid Kantorovich
Kantorovich at the age of 18.
Career
Gallery of Leonid Kantorovich
Leonid Kantorovich
Gallery of Leonid Kantorovich
Left to right: Tjalling C. Koopmans, George B. Dantzig, Leonid V. Kantorovich.
Achievements
Kantorovich received an honorary degree from the University of Cambridge in 1976.
Membership
Awards
Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
Kantorovich receives a Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1975.
In 1926, at the age of fourteen, Kantorovich began his studies at the Leningrad University. He graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics in 1930 and began his graduate studies. He graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy in 1935.
Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich was a Soviet mathematician and economist, known for his theory and development of techniques for the optimal allocation of resources. He was the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1975 and the only winner of this prize from the USSR.
Background
Kantorovich, Leonid Vitaljevich was born on January 19, 1912, in Leningrad, Russia. He was the son of Vitalij M. and Pauline G. (Saks) Kantorovich. His father was a doctor practicing in Saint Petersburg. In 1922, when he was ten years old, his father died and from that time on he was brought up by his mother who played an important role in his upbringing
Education
In 1926, at the age of fourteen, Kantorovich began his studies at the Leningrad University. He graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics in 1930, and began his graduate studies. In 1934, at the age of 22 years, he became a full professor. He was mainly interested in sciences, but also in political economy and modern history.
Kantorovich's scientific activities started in his second university year covering the rather more abstract fields of mathematics. His most significant research in those days was that connected with analytical operations on sets and on projective sets (1929-1930) where he solved some N.N. Lusin problems.
Kantorovich' published his first book in 1933, coauthored with Vladimir Ivanovich Krylov (1902-1994) and Vladimir Ivanovich Smirnov, entitled Calculus of variations. In 1934 the Second All-Union Mathematical Congress was held in Leningrad and attracted around 700 participants. Kantorovich gave two lectures, "On conformal mappings of domains" and "On some methods of approximate solution of partial differential equations". His research was also highlighted in the lecture "Leningrad studies in analysis" given by Vladimir Ivanovich Smirnov. In 1934 he qualified as a professor and, in the following year, he participated in the Moscow Topological Congress. In 1935 he made a major breakthrough when he defined what is now called K-spaces.
Kantorovich's interest in economics began in 1938. In 1939 Kantorovich invented a technique later to be known as “linear programming.” This was a mathematical method for solving complex economic problems. First published in pamphlet form in 1939, it was frowned upon by the Soviet economics establishment, for it advocated the use of relative scarcity as a measure for calculating prices. This was considered a bourgeois heresy, but Kantorovich was so respected as a mathematician, and so cautious in his political statements, that he avoided the dismal fates of other critics of Stalinism. His economic theories were shrugged off as crackpot ideas, and he returned for a substantial time to the study of pure mathematics. It was with the death of Stalin in 1953, and the subsequent liberalization ushered in by Khrushchev, that his economic theories won respect in their native country. He was admitted to the Academy of Sciences as a corresponding member in 1958 and a full member in 1964, and given the Lenin Prize in 1965; these awards helped complete the restoration of his reputation as an economist. His economic system included charging interest on capital; charging rent in accord with the value of a property; imposing a labor tax to prevent Soviet factories from overstaffing; providing state subsidies for job-creating new ventures; and using students, housewives, and the elderly as part-time workers. Optimum use of resources was the touchstone of his thought.
Kantorovich introduced many new concepts into the study of mathematical programming such as giving necessary and sufficient optimality conditions on the base of supporting hyperplanes at the solution point in the production space, the concept of primal-dual methods, the interpretation in the economics of multipliers, and the column-generation method used in linear programming. One of his most fundamental works on economics was The best use of economic resources which he wrote in 1942 but was not published until 1959. In this work, Kantorovich applies optimization techniques to a wide range of problems in economics. He also proposed a theory to handle the economics of technological innovations. This had three components namely the effect on the producer, the effect on the consumer and, the novel part of the theory, the effect derived from the increasing economic potential arising from the innovation. Of course, when Kantorovich first wrote this work World War II was having a major impact on research and scientific publications. He was drafted into the armed forces, given the military rank of a major and, in 1941, the Institute of Industrial Construction where he was teaching became the Higher Technical School of Military Engineering. This was moved from Leningrad to Yaroslavl, 300 km north of Moscow and Kantorovich was evacuated there. As well as teaching at the Higher Technical School of Military Engineering he also undertook various tasks relating to defence. He taught courses on probability which formed the basis for the book Theory of Probability (Russian) (1946). Because of the military nature of the teaching that he was doing at this time the book emphasises applications of probability to military problems.
From 1934 to 1960 Kantorovich was a professor of mathematics at Leningrad State University. He held the chair of mathematics and economics in the Siberian branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk (1961-1971), then directed research at Moscow's Institute of National Economic Planning (1971-1976).
Although Kantorovich is most famous for applications of mathematical methods, particularly mathematical programming, to economics, however, as we have seen, he also worked in many other areas of mathematics. These other areas include functional analysis and numerical analysis and within these topics he published papers on the theory of functions, the theory of complex variables, approximation theory in which he was particularly interested in using Bernstein polynomials, the calculus of variations, methods of finding approximate solutions to partial differential equations, and descriptive set theory. Later in his career he also became interested in computer architecture.
His remarkable contribution to mathematics, economics and computers was published in over 300 papers and books. It is interesting to note that, in the 1980s, Kantorovich suggested that his contributions might be divided into the following nine distinct areas: (1) descriptive function theory and set theory; (2) constructive function theory; (3) approximate methods of analysis; (4) functional analysis; (5) functional analysis and applied mathematics; (6) linear programming; (7) hardware and software; (8) optimal planning and optimal prices; and (9) the economic problems of a planned economy.