Boris Ya. Kogan

Boris Ya. Kogan

Boris Ya. Kogan, in full Boris Yakovlevich Kogan, was Dr. Sci. (Eng.), Prof., Laureate of the USSR State Prize, and a pioneer of analog and hybrid computing machines and systems in the USSR. He joined the Institute of Automation and Remote Control (IARC), the USSR Academy of Sciences, as a graduate student in 1940. Having defended his candidate’s dissertation in engineering, Kogan continued to work as a researcher. In 1959, he founded the Laboratory of Control Systems Modeling at IARC (later, Laboratory No. 10 at Trapeznikov Institute of Control Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences). From 1959 to 1982, Kogan was Head of the Laboratory. In 1962, he defended his doctoral dissertation; in 1964, he became Professor.

Kogan led the creation of a series of EMU-type analog computing machines and two types of original hybrid (analog-digital) computing systems, namely, GVS-100 (jointly with Pupin Institute, Serbia) and GVS Rusalka, the first Soviet high-performance hybrid computing system with hierarchical structure and original mathematical software. Kogan’s design principles and the corresponding theory were the basis of analog and hybrid computing machines produced by the domestic industry.

Kogan and the employees of his Laboratory were among the first researchers in the USSR to develop the theory and methods of mathematical modeling using analog and hybrid computing systems in order to study complex dynamic systems, primarily control systems. The research results were presented in his monograph Elektronnye modeliruyushchie ustroistva i ikh primenenie dlya issledovaniya sistem avtomaticheskogo regulirovaniya (Electronic Modeling Devices and Their Application to the Study of Automatic Control Systems), Moscow: Fizmatgiz, 1963, as well as in numerous papers (edited collections, peer-reviewed journals, and conference proceedings). Note that the monograph was translated in Poland, Hungary, China, Romania, and the USA.

GVS-100 and GVS Rusalka served to model control systems for complex objects and processes. For example, F.B. Gul’ko and A.A. Petrov, employees of Kogan’s Laboratory, detected spiral waves in the heart muscle model (1972). It was a unique discovery in world science, later confirmed by physiological experiments. In addition, V.S. Zykov developed the kinematical theory of stationary spiral waves.

From 1987 until the last days of his life, Kogan was Professor at Computer Science Department, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1987, Kogan proposed the use of high-performance parallel digital machines to model processes in excitable media (nonlinear distributed dynamic systems of a special type) and developed the corresponding algorithms. Later, jointly with his graduate students at UCLA, Kogan established a series of new scientific results in modeling electrophysiological processes of the heart. They were published in 25 articles in leading peer-reviewed journals and presented at numerous international conferences, including St. Petersburg, USA (1997). In recent years, Kogan was engaged in developing a 3D mathematical model of the heart muscle and studying the effect of statistical properties of the conduction channels of the heart cell on excitation propagation processes in the heart tissue.

Kogan was Professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) for over 20 years and Professor at UCLA for the last 17 years. During that time, he developed and taught several original courses for undergraduate and graduate students, including computational modeling methods for dynamical systems and computational cardiology. For many years, he was a member of the editorial board of the journal Automation and Remote Control, Chairman of the IARC’s Academic Council for Computing and Technical Automation Means, and the supervisor of regular all-Union conferences on the theory and methods of mathematical modeling.

Kogan authored over 180 publications and inventions. Under his supervision, 40 candidate’s dissertations were defended (including 4 PhD theses in the USA). Many of his students became doctors of sciences and some became members of various academies.

Kogan’s main books are as follows:

  1. Introduction to Computational Cardiology: Mathematical Modeling and Computer Simulation, New York: Springer, 2010. — 231 p.;
  2. Modeling and Simulation: Theory and Practice, Bekey, G.A. and Kogan, B.Y., Eds., Boston: Kluwer Academic, 2003. — 292 p.;
  3. Elektroniczne maszyny analogowie i ich stosowanie do regulacji automatycznej, Warszawa: Wyd-wa naukowo-techniczne, 1966. — 454 p.;
  4. Electronic Analog Computers and Their Application for Investigation of Automatic Control Systems, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, USA, 1965. — 532 p.;
  5. Dispozitive electronice de modelare şi folosirea lor pentru studiul sistemelor de reglare automată, Bucureşti: Ed. tehnică, 1964. — 431 p.;
  6. Elektronnye modeliruyushchie ustroistva i ikh primenenie dlya issledovaniya sistem avtomaticheskogo regulirovaniya (Electronic Modeling Devices and Their Application to the Study of Automatic Control Systems), Moscow: Fizmatgiz, 1963. — 510 p.;
  7. Analóg számológépek és alkalmazásuk önműködő szabályozások vizsgálatára, Budapest: Műszaki könyvkiadó, 1962. — 395 p.;
  8. Tsifrovye differentsial’nye analizatory (Digital Differential Analyzers), Moscow: Gosinoizdat, 1959. — 242 p.;
  9. Elektronnaya modeliruyushchaya ustanovka tipa EMU-8 (EMU-8 Electronic Modeling Unit), Moscow: Institute of Engineering Cybernetics, the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1957. — 101 p. (coauthors V.V. Gurov and V.M. Evseev);
  10. Elektronnaya modeliruyushchaya ustanovka tipa EMU-5 (EMU-5 Electronic Modeling Unit), Moscow: Institute for Technical and Economic Information, 1956. — 119 p. (coauthors V.A. Trapeznikov, V.V. Gurov, and A.A. Maslov).

Some of them are presented in the Institute’s database:
https://www.ipu.ru/d7ipu/books_library_grid?combine=Коган

A few journal papers by Kogan are available at Math-Net.Ru:

  1979
1. B. Ya. Kogan, I. M. Tetel’baum, Simulation Methods in Research, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1979, 6,  171—180.  
  1976
2. B. Ya. Kogan, A. A. Menn, Оn the Use of Potential Speed of Analog Computers in Hybrid Computer Systems, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1976, 12,  143—155    Autom. Remote Control37:12 (1976), 1908—1919.
  1975
3. M. L. Dashevskii, B. Ya. Kogan, E. S. Skvortsov, Hybrid Computer Approach to Parametric Optimization of Dynamic Systems under Random Disturbances, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1975, 3,  142—152.  
  1968
4. B. Ya. Kogan, A. I. Kaz’min, V. P. Nazarova, A. G. Spiro, Hybrid Computing Systems and Their Principal Domains of Application, Itogi Nauki. Ser. Teor. Veroyatn. Mat. Stat. Teor. Kibern. 1967, 1968,  47—123.      

https://www.mathnet.ru/php/person.phtml?&personid=39393&option_lang=eng

The list of his papers in Avtomatika i Telemekhanika can be found at:
https://www.mathnet.ru/php/search.phtml?jrnid=at&tjrnid=at&wshow=search&option_lang=eng

For their English versions, see the microfilm collection of Automation and Remote Control:
https://archive.org/details/pub_automation-and-remote-control

Some inventions by Kogan are available at:
https://elibrary.ru/patents.asp

Also, see the Wikipedia page devoted to Kogan:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Коган,_Борис_Яковлевич

Scopus Author ID: 36108363200