Translation. Region: Russian Federation –
Source: Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University –
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Vasily Vasilyevich Leontief (1905–1999) – economist, creator of the theory of inter-industry analysis, lecturer at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute named after M. I. Kalinin. Laureate of the Nobel Prize in Economics "for his development of the input-output method and its application to important economic problems" in 1973.
Vasily Leontiev was born in August 1905, the son of an economics professor in Munich, and grew up in Petrograd. In 1921, he entered the Faculty of Social Sciences at Petrograd University, graduating as an external student in 1923.
After completing his studies, he began working as a lecturer in the Department of Economic Geography at the M. I. Kalinin Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. In 1925, he went abroad for medical treatment, where he continued his research. He remained a lecturer at the Polytechnic Institute until September 1926.
The personal file of V. V. Leontiev, a teacher at the M. I. Kalinin Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, is kept in the Central State Archives of St. Petersburg, Collection R-3121. Inventory 12. File 384.
In 1931, the scientist settled in the United States, where he conducted economic research and taught at Harvard and New York Universities. He was the founder and director of the American Institute of Economic Analysis and a consultant to the United Nations.
Wassily Leontief made extensive use of mathematical methods and soon developed new principles of mathematical analysis of the economy, making him a renowned scholar. In 1954, he was elected president of the Econometric Society, and in 1970, president of the American Economic Association. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his research, which he conducted while still in the Soviet Union.
In 1988, the scientist was invited to the USSR as an expert to consult on perestroika. That same year, he was elected a foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
A number of economic phenomena are named after Vasily Vasilyevich, such as the Leontief model and Leontief's paradox. Because of these discoveries, the scientist became known as the "apostle of planning."
Vasily Leontiev is an honorary doctor of the Universities of Brussels, Paris, and Leningrad, an officer of the Legion of Honor (France, 1968), and was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun (Japan, 1984) and the Order of Arts and Literature (France, 1985). He was also a laureate of the Bernard Harms Prize (1970).
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