Translation. Region: Russian Federation –
Source: Novosibirsk State University –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
An auditorium named after renowned Russian mathematician Gury Ivanovich Marchuk has opened in the NSU auditorium building, which is part of the second phase of the new campus being built as part of the national project "Youth and Children." The ceremony was attended by NSU Rector and RAS Academician Mikhail Fedoruk; Director of the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Doctor of Physics and Mathematics Mikhail Marchenko; RAS Academicians Sergey Goncharov and Alexander Aseev; Head of the NSU Programming Department and Doctor of Physics and Mathematics Alexander Marchuk; and Dean of the NSU Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics and Doctor of Physics and Mathematics Igor Marchuk.
The year 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Gury Ivanovich Marchuk. Part of his life was connected with Akademgorodok and Novosibirsk State University. In 1962, Gury Ivanovich came to Akademgorodok at the invitation of Mikhail Alekseevich Lavrentyev. There, he established and began working at the Computing Center of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, while also becoming a professor at Novosibirsk State University. At NSU, he taught a course on computational methods for mathematicians as a core course and taught many specialized courses. He initially took a position as a professor in the Department of Computational Mathematics, then quickly became head of the Department of Mathematical Methods in Geophysics. As Mikhail Alekseevich's successor, he was elected president of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1975. Later, in 1980, he moved to Moscow, headed the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology, and was the last president of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
"Gury Ivanovich undoubtedly made a significant contribution to the development of the Siberian Branch and our entire country. Of course, we currently lack people of his caliber in science and education, which is especially important in such critical, transformative times. He was an outstanding scientist, organizer, and also a man of high moral character. For example, at the Computing Center, which he headed and where about 1,000 people worked, he knew all his employees and addressed them by their first and middle names. There was even a joke that if a standard of politeness were established for one guri, only he would meet that standard," commented Mikhail Fedoruk, Rector of NSU and Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Speaking of Gury Ivanovich's contribution to the development of science, he pioneered a number of new fields. For example, Gury Ivanovich began with atmospheric models and weather forecasting; his PhD dissertation was devoted to this topic, outlining the concept of a baroclinic atmospheric model. This model later became the basis for the first numerical weather forecasts.
From 1953, Guri Ivanovich worked in the closed city of Obninsk, where he developed nuclear reactor calculation methods. He and his research team later received the Lenin Prize for this work. In Obninsk, Guri Ivanovich defended his doctoral dissertation and, based on its findings, published the first-ever book, "Atomic Reactor Calculation Methods," which was translated into many languages with astonishing speed.
Following this success, Mikhail Alekseevich Lavrentyev, Sergei Lvovich Sobolev, and Sergei Alekseevich Khristianovich visited Gury Ivanovich in Obninsk and invited the scientist to Akademgorodok to head the computing center. It was initially located at the Institute of Geology, later at the Institute of Mathematics, and by 1964, the building that now houses the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics was completed.
"The Computing Center of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences opened there on January 10, 1964. Gury Ivanovich hired the first staff, and the history of our institute began. It was there that the first numerical weather forecasting method in the USSR was developed, the first high-level programming languages emerged, classical theorems were proven and included in textbooks on computational mathematics methods, and much more. Gury Ivanovich also initiated the era of school computer science, when computer science classes began at School No. 130 in Akademgorodok. Back then, the computer was located in the computing center, and the school had terminals. Later, in the 1980s, computer science classes were included in the school curriculum throughout the country. Gury Ivanovich also founded the new scientific field of mathematical immunology," said Mikhail Marchenko, Director of the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Doctor of Physics and Mathematics.
When Gury Ivanovich was invited to Moscow to head the State Committee for Science and Technology, he brought 20 employees with him. They became the core of the future Institute of Computational Mathematics, which now bears Gury Ivanovich's name. This is a cutting-edge institute, lacking a laboratory and where employees collaborate on projects. Among its achievements are methods for calculating atmospheric and ocean currents, the relationship between the atmosphere and the ocean, a comprehensive atmospheric model, and weather forecasting methods. The Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics SB RAS currently actively collaborates with the Moscow institute in these areas.
Answering the question of why the university needs named auditoriums, Mikhail Fedoryuk noted that this is important because people should know their great predecessors and build their lives on their example.
"We will also soon open an auditorium named after the outstanding physicist Vladimir Evgenievich Zakharov, one of the founders of the mathematical theory of solitons and the inverse scattering method. People should know that their predecessors, university graduates, became great scientists. This is very important. I'm not even mentioning such titans as Lavrentyev and Vekua, who was the university's first rector. Students should know these people, because there aren't many of them—both rectors and chairmen of the Siberian Branch. We need to understand what great people worked and graduated from the university here," Mikhail Fedoruk emphasized.
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