Saint Petersburg State University

Wassily Wassilyovich Leontief , was a Russian-American economist notable for his research on how changes in one economic sector may have an effect on... other sectors. Leontief won the Nobel Committee's Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1973, and three of his doctoral students have also been awarded the prize . Wassily Leontief was born on August 5, 1905, in Munich, Germany, the son of Wassily W. Leontief and Slata Leontief . W. Leontief, Sr., belonged to a dynasty of old-believer merchants living in St. Petersburg since 1741. Genya Becker belonged to a wealthy Jewish family from Odessa. At 15 in 1921, Wassily, Jr., entered University of Leningrad in present day St. Petersburg. He earned his Learned Economist degree in 1924 at the age of 19. Leontief sided with campaigners for academic autonomy, freedom of speech and in support of Pitirim Sorokin. As a consequence, he was detained several times by the Cheka.
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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. Kantorovich was born on 19 January, 1912, to a Russian Jewish family. His father was a doctor practicing in Saint Petersburg. Kantorovich worked for the Soviet government. He was given the task of optimizing production in a plywood industry. He came up with the mathematical technique now known as linear programming, some years before it was reinvented and much advanced by George Dantzig. He authored several books including The Mathematical Method of Production Planning and Organization and The Best Uses of Economic Resources. For his work, Kantorovich was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1949. After 1939, he became the professor of Military engineering-technical university .
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Lev Davidovich Landau was a prominent Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics. His accomplishments... include the independent co-discovery of the density matrix method in quantum mechanics , the quantum mechanical theory of diamagnetism, the theory of superfluidity, the theory of second-order phase transitions, the Ginzburg–Landau theory of superconductivity, the theory of Fermi liquid, the explanation of Landau damping in plasma physics, the Landau pole in quantum electrodynamics, and the two-component theory of neutrinos. He received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of a mathematical theory of superfluidity that accounts for the properties of liquid helium II at a temperature below 2.17 K . Landau was born on January 22, 1908 to Jewish parents in Baku, in what was then the Russian Empire. Landau's father was an engineer with the local oil industry and his mother was a doctor.
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Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead... and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, Rand moved to the United States in 1926. She worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. After two initially unsuccessful early novels, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead. In 1957, she published her best-known work, the philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own magazines and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982. Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge and rejected all forms of faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism, and rejected ethical altruism.
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