Anatoly Kitov

Anatoly Ivanovich Kitov (9 August 1920, Samara - 14 October 2005) was a pioneer of cybernetics in the Soviet Union.

Anatoly Kitov was born in Samara in 1920.

The Kitov family moved to Tashkent in 1921, as Anatoly's father, Ivan Stepanovich Kitov, had served as a junior officer in the White Army and wanted to avoid the repercussions of the Russian Civil War.

Anatoly excelled at secondary school and graduated in 1939.

However, his enrollment at Tashkent State Technical University was interrupted when he was called up for military service.

While serving in the Red Army, his exceptional abilities caught the attention of Kliment Voroshilov, who ordered him to enlist in the High Artillery School in Leningrad.

In June 1941, Kitov and his fellow students had to halt their studies and were urgently deployed to the front.

Kitov was already a lieutenant at that time.

During lulls between battles, Kitov pursued his studies in mathematics and other university subjects.

In 1943, at the age of 22, he conducted his first analytical work, proposing a new method of anti-aircraft shooting.

In August 1945, Kitov gained admission to the rocket armaments department of the Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy, a prestigious military university in the USSR.

He skipped the first academic year and joined in the second.

Kitov took an active role as chairman of the academy's student scientific society.

Throughout his studies, he worked on the development of a novel rocket weapon and received an "author's certificate on the invention" (patent) from the USSR State Committee on Inventions.

His project proposal was later presented to Joseph Stalin, the supreme commander of the Red Army and General Secretary of the Communist Party.

Furthermore, Kitov contributed to the efforts of Sergei Korolev's task force, which was engaged in the development of the Soviet R-1 missile.

In August 1945, Kitov gained admission to the rocket armaments department of the Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy, a prestigious military university in the USSR.

He skipped the first academic year and joined in the second.

Kitov took an active role as chairman of the academy's student scientific society.

Throughout his studies, he worked on the development of a novel rocket weapon and received an "author's certificate on the invention" (patent) from the USSR State Committee on Inventions.

His project proposal was later presented to Joseph Stalin, the Red Army supreme commander and General Secretary of the Communist Party.

Kitov also contributed to the efforts of Sergei Korolev's task force, which was engaged in the development of the Soviet R-1 missile.

In 1950, Kitov graduated from the academy with honors and received a gold medal.

Kitov was the first user of the first Soviet serial computer "Strela" within the Military Ministry of the USSR.

Kitov was the first in the USSR to organise and lead scientific work on solving military problems with the use of electronic computers.

Previously their duties were calculations for a variety of mathematician bureaus within the General Staff of the USSR armed forces, for the Main Intelligence Directorate, for the Main Directorate of the Land Forces, and for the Directorate of Support, among others.

By the mid-1950s, Kitov developed his main principles of computer-based automated military-control and management systems for defence purposes.

Great measures were taken to apply these principles.

In 1952, Kitov founded and headed the first Soviet "Department of Computers" at the Artillery Academy.

At that time it was called the "Department of Mathematical Machines".

Also in 1952 Kitov wrote the nation's first scientific PhD dissertation on programming, with the subject "Programming of the outer ballistics problems for the long range missiles".

Between 1953 and 1963, Kitov issued the Soviet Union's first series of scientific journal articles on military informatics.

They were published by the journals Military Thought, Radioelectronics, News of the F.E. Dzerzhisky Artillery Academy, and periodical collections of works at the USSR Ministry of Defence, and other "special" (classified) sources.

In Computer Center Number 1 at the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, Kitov came up with many of the ideas of modern military informatics used today.

In 1953, Kitov published a pioneering 30-page scientific article, "Implementation and usage of electronic computers", the Union's first such article.

In May 1954, when he was 33, Kitov founded the first computer centre in the USSR, the Computer Centre No 1 of the Ministry of Defense (secret number 01168) and became its first head.

He enjoyed indisputable authority and respect among his colleagues and subordinates.

Ballistic calculations for strategic rocket forces and for the first spaceflights took special priority in the CC No. 1's work.

A description of the architecture of the highly advanced "M-100" computer became a part of Kitov's thesis for his second doctoral degree.

The dissertation was titled "Implementation of Computers for solving the Problems of Antiaircraft and Antimissile Defence."