Science history: Otto Yulyevich Schmidt, hero of Russia | Mathematics - Cosmos

He was a man of many talents, and many awards. Jeff Glorfeld, now a freelance journalist based in California, US.  reports.

Otto Schmidt on a Russian stamp released in 1966.
Photo: Post of the Soviet Union / Public domain

If Otto Yulyevich Schmidt hadn’t lived, some creative storyteller would have had to make him up.

Various sources describe him as a scientist, mathematician, astronomer, geophysicist, statesman and academic. The list scarcely does him justice.

He received the Order of Lenin, three times; the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, twice; and the Order of the Red Star. In 1937 he was named a Hero of the Soviet Union.

In 1948, Russian astronomer Pelageya Fedorovna Shajn discovered and named a minor planet - 2108 Otto Schmidt – in his honour

Schmidt, whose name is often written as Shmidt, was born on 30 September 1891 in Mogilev, part of the Russian Empire now in modern Belarus. By all accounts a gifted and hard-working student, he graduated from Kiev University in 1913, specialising in physics and mathematics...

In 1921 Schmidt was appointed director of the State Publishing House and saw to it that the publishing of scientific journals and research papers resumed. In 1924 he was appointed editor-in-chief of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia.

In 1923 he became a professor of mathematics at Moscow State University.
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Source: Cosmos