Aksel Ivanovich Berg
Berg, Aksel’ Ivanovich
Born Oct. 29 (Nov. 10), 1893, in Orenburg. Soviet radio engineer; engineer admiral. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1946; corresponding member, 1943). Hero of Socialist Labor (1963). Member of the CPSU since 1944.
In 1914, Berg graduated from the Naval School. During World War I he was the navigation officer on a submarine, and in the Civil War he commanded a submarine. In 1922, Berg was awarded the rank of Hero of Labor of a Detached Squadron of Submarines. In 1923 he graduated from the Naval Engineering School and in 1925 from the Naval Academy in Leningrad. Between 1924 and 1943 he taught at institutions of higher learning (as a professor from 1930) in Leningrad. In 1943 and 1944 he was deputy peoples commissar of the electrical industry and from 1943 to 1947, vice chairman of the Council on Radar. From 1953 to 1957 he was deputy minister of defense.
He is the author of works on electron valve oscillators, radio receivers, direction finding, frequency stabilization and self-excitation of generators, radar, and so on. He raised and solved a number of problems which have great significance in the development of electronics and national defense. Through his initiative and leadership a number of scientific-research institutes and plants were created. As chairman (from 1959) of the Scientific Council on the Complex Problem of Cybernetics under the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Berg directed the coordination of studies in this field for the country. From 1964 he directed the effort to introduce the modern achievements of cybernetics into pedagogy, was chairman of the Interdepartmental Scientific Council on Programmed Instruction, and at the same time guided the Interdepartmental Scientific Council on Quality and Reliability.
From 1962 to 1965 he was editor in chief of the encyclopedia Automation of Production and Industrial Electronics. He has received three Orders of Lenin, six other orders, and also medals. For his work in radio engineering he was presented with the A. S. Popov gold medal of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1951.