Short essay on the life and scientific activities of Yakov Zalmanovich Tsypkin (1919–1997)

✍ Scribed by Boris Kogan

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 102 KB
• Volume: 15
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0890-6327
• DOI: 10.1002/acs.637

✦ Synopsis

Yasha Tsypkin, that is how everyone called him at a high school in the city of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, student at Moscow Institute of Communications, and later when he became a young engineer at the Moscow Research Institute of Aviation Equipment. In the same manner, his close friends and colleagues would address him when he was known as a talented scientist, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, Professor and Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a Lenin prizeR-winner. This is very typical for Yakov Zalmanovich. He continued to be the same open-hearted person, friendly but with a sharp sense of humor, as in his youth. Towards the end of his life, only his hair, at one time, dark auburn, turned white and his slightly hobbling walk became more SIn between Masters and Ph.D. degrees in comparison with the requirements at the U.S.A. pronounced. This walk was a result of an amputation of a part of the foot after his participation in an unsuccessful parachute landing operation on Russia's Western Front during World War II.

My "rst acquaintance with Yakov Zalmanovich, occurred due to his scienti"c works and only later did I meet him personally. On an autumn day of 1944 war year, I happened to meet with Prof. Lossievski, one of the oldest researchers at the Institute of Automation and Telemechanic (IAT), Academy of Sciences, USSR. At that time, I was a graduate student at that Institute and was busy in preparing my thesis. Prof. Lossievski told me that a very capable young man had shown up on our horizon. He was not sure, if that young man was still staying in the military hospital or if he was released after a treatment. That young man had sent his works to our Institute and asked permission to defend there his thesis for the degree of Candidate of Sciences.S At the same time, he gave me a manuscript, which that man had typed, in the hospital * &The degree of the stability of control systems'. The author of this manuscript was Yakov Zalmanovich.

My personal acquaintance with him took place later on November 20, 1945. That day, both of us defended our thesis at the same session of the IAT scienti"c council. His dissertation was remarkable for the originality of results, the simplicity of interpretation, and excellence in the knowledge of current literature.

After the successful defense, he continued to work as a senior researcher in the Research Institute of Aviation Equipment. One could meet him often in the library of the Engineering Department of the Academy of Science, and, of course, during Prof. Aizerman's seminar on the Theory of Control Systems. At that time, academician A. A. Andronov played the leading role in this seminar.

Once in 1947, we met in the library, which was located in the same building where our Institute was situated. Yakov Zalmanovich in his typical friendly manner, so characteristic of him, addressed me in Russian slang: how is &zhitukha', which can be rendered as &what is cooking, Boris'? In reply to my question, he told me that he had managed to accomplish a new investigation, and that he was going to present the results in his doctoral thesis. It was his now well-known work &On Control Systems with Delayed Feedback'.

At that time, we were not very close, and I had no idea about his tremendous productivity, diligence and outstanding abilities. I could not believe that it was possible to accomplish new research and write a doctoral dissertation in two years after the defence of the candidate dissertation. It is necessary to note that a doctoral dissertation was expected to be a fundamental contribution to a new scienti"c "eld. As I found out much later, I was not alone in my doubts. Academician A. A. Andronov, an outstanding scientist in the area of non-linear oscillations, read the dissertation, as an o$cial reviewer, and could not believe that such strong scienti"c results could belong to such a young man (Yakov Zalmanovich was then only 28 years old). Andronov visited Tsypkin's home speci"cally to get acquainted with the scope of his interests and to "nd out what scienti"c literature he read, what kind of books he had at home. Andronov was staggered by what he saw. The small room, only 14 m of living space, in a communal apartment (several families in one apartment with common conveniences), where Yakov Zalmanovich lived with his wife and small daughter, was full of books occupying all the walls from the #oor to the ceiling.

Yakov Zalmanovich showed an ability for creative scienti"c work very early. He managed to graduate from the Institute of Communications and Moscow State University, department of Mechanics and Mathematics concurrently before WWII. At that time, he also participated in various research projects in the Power Institute, laboratory of Prof. Gutenmaher, and in the 108 MEMOIRS