doctoral_advisor death_date birth_place nationality fields birth_date article_title name alma_mater
valery glivenko 1987 moscow soviet mathematics , engineering 1907 victor shestakov
 victor shestakov moscow state university
victor shestakov

victor ivanovich shestakov -lrb- 1907 -- 1987 -rrb- was a russian/soviet logician and theoretician of electrical engineering .
in 1935 he discovered the possible interpretation of boolean algebra of logic in electro-mechanical relay circuits .
he graduated from moscow state university -lrb- 1934 -rrb- and worked there in the general physics department almost until his death .
shestakov proposed a theory of electric switches based on boolean logic earlier than claude shannon -lrb- according to certification of soviet logicians and mathematicians sofya yanovskaya , m.g. gaaze-rapoport , roland dobrushin , oleg lupanov , yu .
a. gastev , yu .
t. medvedev , and vladimir andreevich uspensky -rrb- , though shestakov and shannon defended theses the same year -lrb- 1938 -rrb- and the first publication of shestakov 's result took place only in 1941 -lrb- in russian -rrb- .
in the early 20th century , relay circuits began to be more widely used in automatics , defense of electric and communications systems .
every relay circuit schema for practical use was a distinct invention , because the general principle of simulation of these systems was not known .
shestakov 's credit -lrb- and independently later claude shannon 's -rrb- is the general theory of logical simulation , inspired by the rapidly increasing complexity of technical demands .
logical simulation requires solid mathematical foundations .
namely these foundations were originally established by shestakov .
shestakov set forth an algebraic logic model of electrical two-pole switches -lrb- later three - and four-pole switches -rrb- with series and parallel connections of schematic elements -lrb- resistors , capacitors , magnets , inductive coils , etc. -rrb- .
resistance of these elements could take arbitrary values on the real-number line , and upon the two-element set -lcb- 0 , ∞ -rcb- this degenerates into the bivalent boolean algebra of logic .
shestakov may be considered as a forerunner of combinatorial logic and its application -lrb- and , hence , boolean algebra of logic as well -rrb- in electric engineering , the ` language ' of which is broad enough to simulate non-electrical objects of any conceivable physical nature .
he was a pioneer of study of merged continual algebraic logic -lrb- parametrical -rrb- and topological -lrb- structural -rrb- models .
