Anatoly Kitov - Pioneer of Russian Informatics - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 81

and NORMIN - for working with text information), etc. The total amount and innova-
tive quality of his scientific works are really impressive.
The Chairman of IFIP Congress 1974 and IEEE Computer Society Computer Pio-
neer academician Victor Glushkov stressed the outstanding role of A. Kitov: "The real
implementation of cybernetical ideas in the USSR takes start from the Kitov's first
positive article "Main features of cybernetics". Kitov's topic "Digital Computing
Machines" was the first Soviet topic on this topic".
Alexey Lyapunov, also the IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer, called A.
Kitov "the first knight of Soviet cybernetics".
2 The Beginning: World War II and Learning at the University
Anatoly Ivanovich Kitov was born on the 9th of August 1920, in town of Samara in
Volga region. During the Civil War (1918-1920) his father Ivan Stepanovich Kitov
served in White army as a junior officer what could have negative consequences those
times. So in 1921 Kitov the elder, with wife and son, moved to Tashkent (Uzbeki-
stan). Anatoly Kitov graduated from secondary school in 1939. For excellent results
in study and brilliant abilities he was awarded a gold medal. In the same year he
entered the Tashkent University but after three months was called up for military
service. Since he again demonstrated outstanding talents the army commander in
chief field marshal Kliment Voroshilov personally ordered to enlist Kitov into High
Artillery School in Leningrad. With outbreak of the war with Germany, in July 1941,
Anatoly was dispatched to the South front as an artillery platoon commander. In the
battle for Stalingrad Kitov was seriously wounded. He spent all four war years in
anti-aircraft artillery, where he himself steadily continued study of mathematics and
physics using every free minute.
With the end of war, in 1945, A. Kitov entered the Artillery Engineering Academy
in Moscow. Formidable knowledge obtained during his excellent studies enabled
Kitov's beginning of own scientific research already before graduation. Being still a
student he received a patent (the USSR "Author's Certificate") for devised by him "jet
cannon" and the Ministry of Defense reported about it directly to Joseph Stalin. A.
Kitov graduated from the Artillery Engineering Academy in 1950 with the Gold
medal.
In 1952 Kitov successfully submitted dissertation thesis "Programming for ballistic
problems of the long-range rockets" and received scientific degree "Candidate of
technical sciences". It was the first Soviet thesis on programming. In 1952-54 he
created and headed the first computer department at the Artillery Engineering
academy.
The task of the national importance was carried out by A. Kitov in 1954 when
he created and became a chief of the Computer Centre № 1 of the USSR Ministry
of Defense. Kitov managed to form the team of scientists and engineers, to teach
his colleagues, he founded the main directions of scientific research of this pio-
neer computer center. In two years the Computer Centre № 1 became the most
important scientific research and engineering center in the USSR. In the middle
1950-s 160 programmers, 85 information analysts, 40 mathematicians (specialists