Boris Petrov

Born Feb. 26 (Mar. 11), 1913, in Smolensk. Soviet specialist in automatic control. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1960; corresponding member, 1953). Hero of Socialist Labor (1969).

After graduating from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute in 1939, Petrov worked at the Institute of Problems of Control of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR—he was a senior research worker between 1940 and 1946 and the institute’s director from 1947 to 1951, in which year he became a department head. In 1950 he was made head of a subdepartment at the Moscow Institute of Aviation, where he had been appointed a professor in 1948. He became academician-secretary of the Division of Mechanics and Control Processes of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1963. He is chairman of Interkosmos —the Council for International Cooperation in the Exploration and Utilization of Outer Space.

Petrov’s chief works deal with the theory of automatic control, the theory of invariance of automatic control systems, adaptive control systems, information problems of control theory, and automatic control systems for moving objects.

Petrov is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics (1971) and of several foreign academies of sciences. He received the Lenin prize in 1966 and the State Prize of the USSR in 1972. He has been awarded four Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, two other orders, and several medals. Petrov has also been awarded four foreign orders and various medals.