Boris N. Naumov

Boris N. Naumov

Born: 

Sunday, July 10, 1927

Passed away: 

Saturday, June 11, 1988

Boris Naumov, in full Boris Nikolaevich Naumov, was born in 1927. The first place of future Academician’s work was the Institute of Automation and Remote Control (IARC), the USSR Academy of Sciences, which he joined after graduating from Moscow Power Engineering Institute in 1950. During 17 years at IARC, he made a career from a young researcher (Ya.Z. Tsypkin’s student) into a leading expert in nonlinear automatic control systems. In 1955, Naumov defended his candidate’s dissertation; in 1965, his doctoral dissertation. At the age of 40 (1967), he was invited to direct the Institute of Electronic Control Machines (INEUM).

Naumov demonstrated outstanding managerial skills by actively participating in the organization of all-Union meetings on automatic control. As a founder of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), he was one of the main organizers of the 1st IFAC Congress in Moscow.

By 1967, Naumov had a year of internship (1958—1959) at the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was close in contact with N. Wiener. The offer to become INEUM’s Director continued the path that Naumov had been following in life and science, from the particular to the general. For a long time, he was concerned with the continuously expanding range of control theory applications in the absence of serially produced and effective digital control systems. For the next period of 17 years, Naumov was INEUM’s Director. His name was associated with the following achievements:

  • development and serial production of ASVT-M and SM EVM, two families of control and computing complexes (For many years, they became the basis for scientific research automation, information and computer complexes, computer-aided design, and management in the national economy);
  • initiation and organization of works on developing software for microprocessor complexes, computer networks, and complexes with unique processors (including the Fourier processor, used to build a map of Venus);
  • establishment of the Institute of Informatics Problems (IPI), the USSR Academy of Sciences, conceived by Naumov as a scientific center on mass-application computers. (During the last 5 years of his life, Naumov was IPI’s Director.)

As a general designer of SM EVM, Naumov significantly contributed to international cooperation in computer technology. For that international computer system, he was awarded the USSR State Prize.

With his active participation, research groups from the USSR Academy of Sciences and Academies of Eastern European countries developed the concept of new generations of computing systems. Naumov was the organizer and General Director of Personal Computers, an intersectoral scientific and technical complex.

In addition, Naumov was a foreign member of the DDR and CzSSR Academies of Sciences and Editor-in-Chief of the international (Eastern European) journal Computing Systems of New Generations.

His main books are as follows:

  1. Algoritmy optimizatsii i avtomatizatsii proektirovaniya ASU (Algorithms of Optimization and Computer-Aided Design of Automated Control Systems), Moscow: Energoatomizdat, 1983. — 160 p. (coauthors E.Ya. Kesler and N.A. Levin);
  2. Teoriya nelineinykh avtomaticheskikh sistem. Chastotnye metody (Theory of Nonlinear Automatic Systems. Frequency Methods), Moscow: Nauka, 1972. — 544 p.;
  3. Tochnye metody issledovaniya nelineinykh sistem avtomaticheskogo upravleniya (Exact Analysis Methods for Nonlinear Automatic Control Systems), Moscow: Mashinostroenie, 1971. — 322 p. (coauthors V.M. Kuntsevich, A.M. Letov, R.A. Nelepin, B.N. Petrov, V.Ya. Platov, E.P. Popov, G.S. Pospelov, E.N. Rozenvasser, B.M. Shamrikov, V.M. Shelenkov, R.M. Yusupov, E.Ya. Kesler, and N.A. Levin);
  4. Perekhodnye protsessy v lineinykh sistemakh avtomaticheskogo regulirovaniya (Transients in Linear Automatic Control Systems), Moscow: Gosenergoizdat, 1960. — 222 p.

The books are presented in the Institute’s database:
https://www.ipu.ru/d7ipu/books_library_grid?combine=Наумов

One journal paper by Naumov is available at Math-Net.Ru:

  1984
  B. N. Naumov, I. Ya. Landau, Small Computer Systems, UFN143:2 (1984),  319—320  ; Phys. Usp.27:6 (1984), 454—455.

https://www.mathnet.ru/php/person.phtml?&personid=155109&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

Also, see the Wikipedia page devoted to Naumov:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Наумов,_Борис_Николаевич

Scopus Author ID: 57194891428