Mikhail Lavrentyev

Mikhail Alexeyevich Lavrentyev (Russian: Михаи́л Алексе́евич Лавре́нтьев) (November 19, 1900, Kazan – October 15, 1980, Moscow) was a Soviet physicist and mathematician.

Lavrentyev went to Moscow University where he was a student of Nikolai Luzin. He then worked at the university and later became a professor and a director of Steklov Institute. His main work was on conformal mappings and partial differential equations. Mstislav Keldysh was one of his students.

Mikhail Lavrentyev was one of the main organizers and the first Chairman of the Siberian Branch of Soviet Academy of Sciences (in his time Siberian Division of the Soviet Academy of Sciences) from 1957 to 1975, Hero of Socialist Labour, Lenin and Soviet State Prizes Winner, holder of Lomonosov Gold Medal, member of several foreign Academies, honorable citizen of Novosibirsk. As a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Lavrentyev undertook the idea of establishing a new science center in the Soviet Union, which resulted in erecting a "science town" Akademgorodok in the vicinity of Novosibirsk, Siberia.