Oleg I. Larichev

Oleg I. Larichev

Born: 

Thursday, September 20, 1934

Passed away: 

Sunday, January 19, 2003

Oleg Larichev, in full Oleg Ivanovich Larichev, Full Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a leading expert in the theory and methods of decision-making and artificial intelligence, worked at the Institute of Automation and Remote Control (IARC), the USSR Academy of Sciences, from 1962 to 1980.

In 1956, Larichev, a student of the Bauman Moscow State Technical School (BMSTS), made a very unusual decision, having requested a topic for his course project from IARC. Larichev did not want to get the course project off his back but to conduct interesting research. And he received the topic from Dr. Sci. (Eng.) A.Ya. Lerner. Nevertheless, having graduated from BMSTS with honors (1958), Larichev was distributed to the Kovrov plant as a non-Muscovite. However, after two years of prescribed work, he entered postgraduate studies at IARC and devoted himself to scientific work with passion and diligence. In 1965, Larichev defended his candidate’s dissertation. In 1969, the young promising scientist was sent to France for an internship at Sema-Metra SA, Bertrand Berthier’s research and consulting firm. Larichev’s internship was very productive. He took an active part in a firm’s practical project and, most importantly, studied the newest scientific field at that time, rational choice in unique situations and the related problems of multicriteria comparison of alternatives.

Having returned from France, Larichev headed a research group on theoretical and practical problems in the field. The R&D works were quite fruitful. Larichev proposed new ideas, the group expanded, and interesting results appeared. Meanwhile, a cruel blow of fate happened: his wife died of cancer. The young scientist was left with three small children. Life became a real tangle of problems: child-rearing, dealing with daily chores, and exploring the mysteries of his favorite science.

According to his friends, Larichev did not lose heart and showed all his best qualities: willpower, self-discipline, fitness to work, optimism, and friendliness. He was like a squirrel on a treadmill and passionately tackled scientific issues of his favorite field. As a result, a major research area was formed; his students multiplied and successfully defended their graduation works. In 1976, Larichev defended his doctoral dissertation at IARC, and his opponent was M.A. Aizerman. It was one of the outstanding events in the Institute’s history: the new approaches to solving weakly structured problems were sharply criticized by adherents of classical optimization.

In 1979, Larichev published his first monograph Nauka i iskusstvo prinyatiya reshenii (The Science and Art of Decision-Making), Moscow: Nauka. After that, he became widely known. In 1980, Larichev headed the Department of Decision Theory and Methods at All-Union Research Institute for Systems Study (VNIISI, the USSR Academy of Sciences). Presently, this is Institute for Systems Analysis, the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISA RAS). His research interests included consciousness psychology, the theory and practice of building complete expert knowledge databases, and the development of man-machine procedures for consulting and implicit learning. Larichev’s research received international recognition. He was in close contact with distinguished figures of decision-making, such as H. Simon, B. Roy, and others. Larichev became Member of the International Society for Decision-Making and the Psychological Society. Also, he was a permanent member of the organizing committees and editorial boards of Russian and foreign peer-reviewed journals as well as Professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. In 1991, Larichev was elected Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; in 1997, Full Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Overcoming a heart disease, Larichev worked fantastically hard and felt keenly the decline in domestic academic research. In January 2003, his heart failed.

Larichev’s main books and brochures are as follows:

  1. Verbal’nyi analiz reshenii (Verbal Analysis of Decisions), ed. by A.B. Petrovskii, Moscow: Nauka, 2006. — 181 p.;
  2. Teoriya i metody prinyatiya reshenii, a takzhe khronika sobytii v volshebnykh stranakh (Theory and Methods of Decision-Making and a Chronicle of Events in Magical Lands), 3rd ed., Moscow: Logos, 2006. — 392 p.;
  3. Multiple Criteria Analysis in Strategic Siting Problems, Boston: Kluwer Academic, 2001. — 226 p. (coauthor D.L. Olson);
  4. Verbal Decision Analysis for Unstructured Problems, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997. — 272 p. (coauthor H. Moshkovich);
  5. Kachestvennye metody prinyatiya reshenii (Qualitative Methods of Decision-Making), Moscow: Fizmatlit, 1996. — 208 p. (coauthor H. Moshkovich);
  6. Knowledge Acquisition for the Construction of the Full and Contradiction Free Knowledge Bases, Groningen: IEC ProGAMMA, 1991. — 222 p. (coauthors H. Moshkovich, E. Furems, et al.);
  7. Metody poiska lokal’nogo ekstremuma ovrazhnykh funktsii (Methods for Finding a Local Extremum of Ravine Functions), Moscow: Nauka, 1990. — 95 p. (coauthor G.G. Gorvits);
  8. Vyyavlenie ekspertnykh znanii (Revelation of Expert Knowledge), Moscow: Nauka, 1989. — 128 p. (coauthors A.I. Mechitov, E.M. Moshkovich, and E.M. Furems);
  9. Ob"ektivnye modeli i sub"ektivnye resheniya (Objective Models and Subjective Decisions), Moscow: Nauka, 1987. — 143 p.;
  10. Mnogokriterial’nye metody prinyatiya reshenii (Multicriteria Methods of Decision-Making), Moscow: Znanie, 1985. — 32 p. (coauthor S.V. Emel’yanov);
  11. Nauka i iskusstvo prinyatiya reshenii (The Science and Art of Decision-Making), Moscow: Nauka, 1979. — 200 p.;
  12. Problemy i metody prinyatiya reshenii (Problems and Methods of Decision-Making), Moscow: VINITI, 1973. — 44 p. (coauthors S.V. Emel’yanov and V.M. Ozernoi).

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

Several journal papers by Larichev are available at Math-Net.Ru:

  2005
1. G. G. Dimitriadi, O. I. Larichev, Decision Support System and the ZAPROS-III Method for Ranking the Multiattribute Alternatives with Verbal Quality Estimates, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 2005, 8,  146—160    Autom. Remote Control66:8 (2005), 1322—1335.  
  2002
2. O. I. Larichev, Properties of the Decision Methods in the Multicriteria Problems of Individual Choice, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 2002, 2,  146—158      Autom. Remote Control63:2 (2002), 304—315.    
  1999
3. A. A. Aslanov, O. I. Larichev, The Impact of Human Information on Decision Methods, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1999, 5,  20—31  Autom. Remote Control60:5 (1999), 618—627.  
4. D. L. Kozhevnikov, O. I. Larichev, Comparison of Algorithms for Decoding Monotone Functions by the Statistical Simulation Method, Zh. Vychisl. Mat. Mat. Fiz.39:8 (1999),  1415—1421      Comput. Math. Math. Phys.39:8 (1999), 1356—1362.
  1998
5. O. I. Larichev, M. U. Sternin, Man-Machine Methods for Solving a Multicriterial Assignment Problem, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1998, 7,  135—156            Autom. Remote Control59:7 (1998), 1016—1031.
  1996
6. I. Anich, O. I. Larichev, The ELEKTRA Method and the Problem of Acyclicity of Relations of Alternatives, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1996, 8,  108—118    Autom. Remote Control57:8 (1996), 1154—1162.
  1995
7. A. A. Bolotov, O. I. Larichev, Comparison of Pattern Recognition Methods by Precision of Approximating the Separating Hyperplanes, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1995, 7,  116—123    Autom. Remote Control56:7 (1995), 1004—1010.
  1994
8. O. I. Larichev, The structure of Experts Knowledge in Classification Tasks, Dokl. Akad. Nauk336:6 (1994),  750—752.  
  1991
9. O. I. Larichev, V. K. Morgoev, Problems. Methods and Systems of Expert Knowledge Extraction, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1991, 6,  3—27.  
  1988
10. O. I. Larichev, A. I. Mechitov, E. M. Moshkovich, E. M. Furems, A Method of Expert Classification for the Formation of Knowledge Bases of Diagnostic Systems, Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR298:5 (1988),  1086—1089      Dokl. Math.33:2 (1988), 98—100.
  1986
11. L. S. Gnedenko, O. I. Larichev, E. M. Moshkovich, E. M. Furems, A Procedure for the Construction of a Quasiorder on a Set of Multicriteria Alternatives on the Basis of Reliable Information about the Decision Maker’s Preferences, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1986, 9,  104—113      Autom. Remote Control47:9 (1986), 1258—1267.
12. O. I. Larichev, E. M. Moshkovich, Problems of Direct Classification in Decision-Making, Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR287:3 (1986),  567—570.      
  1981
13. O. I. Larichev, Analysis of Human Decision Making Processes with Options Which Are Estimated in Terms of Many Criteria (Survey), Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1981, 8,  131—141.  
  1977
14. V. S. Boychenko, O. I. Larichev, E. M. Moshkovich, Methods for Program-Objective R&D Planning (Critical Analysis), Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1977, 11,  95—105.  
15. A. N. Kozhukharov, O. I. Larichev, A Multi-Criterial Assignment Problem, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1977, 7,  71—88      Autom. Remote Control38:7 (1977), 1004—1018.
  1975
16. O. I. Larichev, Systems Analysis: Problems and Prospects, Avtomat. i Telemekh., 1975, 2,  61—71    Autom. Remote Control36:2 (1975), 241—249.

https://www.mathnet.ru/php/person.phtml?&personid=62928&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 (1956—1994):
https://archive.org/details/pub_automation-and-remote-control

and the journal page at SpringerLink (2001—2022):
https://www.springer.com/journal/10513

In addition, his publications are available at:
https://elibrary.ru/author_items.asp?authorid=26&pubrole=100&show_refs=1&show_option=0

Publications about O.I. Larichev

1. F.T. Aleskerov, A.A. Asanov, E.I. Bruk, A.V. Lotov, G.V. Roizenzon, V.K. Finn, and N.V. Chugunov, Oleg Ivanovich Larichev, Moscow: Logos, 2005. — 352 p.
2. Oleg Ivanovich Larichev (September 20, 1934 — January 19, 2003)Avtomat. i Telemekh., 2003, no. 8, 185—189; Autom. Remote Control64:8 (2003), 1364—1368.

Also, see the Wikipedia page devoted to Larichev:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ларичев,_Олег_Иванович

Scopus Author ID: 7004229702