Thank you. So here we have the brilliant mind outfitted with a rank of Colonel General, whose intensive, 15 years long, faithful and arduous intellectual service was beyond a shadow of a doubt truly essential for the concluding success of his country and for the entire multinational war effort.
Ivan Volosok, who developed the WWII Soviet cryptographic machine?
No Sir. This man indeed was a Soviet general, but he was not affianced with the cryptography. Nevertheless, his mathematical ability was truly outstanding. After all – he possessed a PhD that was accomplished and successfully defended within the branch of Systems theory. 
Markian Mikhailovich Popov?
My dear Librarian,
I have no idea who it is, and neither does Google. 
I’ve been working on the basis of your clues that it’s someone who made a major contribution leading up and during the war, culminating in the Manchurian assault in 1945, which was the biggest assault undertaken by the USSR, but in a non-battle area such as strategy or doctrine with a mathematical or systems flavour. Perhaps intelligence analysis, massed artillery assaults, logistics, or something else which brought force to bear on the enemy without being a battlefield commander or staff officer in that conflict.
Am I going in vaguely the right direction?
Markian Mikhailovich Popov?
Alas – no, my dear Mr. Sceadugenga.
I have no idea who it is, and neither does Google.
That was a good one, My dear Mr. Rising Sun! But don’t worry – our current situation in this thread is solvable! You know, like in that old Australian rhyme: Hinkle, Hinkle, Little star - Sixteens days and here you are!
And yes - you actually are on the right track: our mysterious personality newer was a field commander. He was a scientist who served in Army. And what he did? Well… as you know, army - as well as state - from the mathematicl point of view represents an open system, connected by dependable and always somehow interrupted transformation process of incoming resources to outcoming artifacts or actions. In a war you always do have improvisation under pressure – a constant conflict between the requirements of rational long-term policy of solutions and the daily urgency of getting by.
Burden of analyses and computation - as means for reaching the proper solution - is especially heavy in this case. However, if you know what your key performance indicators are – you will be able to make right decisions without limits of infertile and dangerous waste of time.
Basically, he mathematicaly explained how successfully decisionmakers are able to break free of past patterns, to mobilize new information, to re-examine the situation, and to chart a sound new course of action – in a word - to make optimal decision within a given system, a choice with the aim of discarding other available options that are incapable to lead to a better outcome. Huh! :roll:
In addition, it has to be said that for some mysterious reasons he was pretty undeservedly remembered in public only as a prolific mechanical engineer. Yes, it surely is a historical fact that out of some 140.000 pieces of certain… military hardware 120.000 pieces were made from his designs, but from the purely scientific point of view previously described employment was significantly more important. 
BTW – a couple of years ago I have had a pleasure of working with a very best scientific collaborator in my entire intellectual life. He was an Aussie - a brilliant, gifted and so old-fashionably honest personality… Mansel Ismay was his name. I don’t know what happened with him. If you have some information, my dear Mr. Rising Sun, just launch a tiny note by our PM. I am assuring yoy that that piece of information will be highly appreciated.
My dear Librarian,
I’m trying to reason this out, from a position of total ignorance (which is my preferred position as it allows me to speculate uninhibited by distracting nuisances, such as facts. ).
I need more clues to solve what I suspect will be, for me, an insoluble problem as my knowledge of RKKA back room boys is even worse than my knowledge of RKKA front room boys, although I have heard of somebody called Zhukov.
I’m focusing on the number of pieces for a clue, but I can’t find a nice neat production figure for any specific item.
Using ‘piece’ generally could refer to vehicles or grenades or spoons or anything else, but with 140,000 pieces in an army of roughly 35 million during the war it’s got to be something not very widely distributed.
‘Piece’ suggests artillery but I can’t find anything in field guns, rocketry etc that meets that number, nor mortars.
Field radios of some sort seem a bit more probable for a mathematician but I can’t find any production numbers. Or it could be AA direction systems or radar or optics or various other possibilities.
Your other clues would suggest that he designed a computer of some sort, but I can’t see 140,000 of them being issued for a disproportionately small number of divisional, corps and army staffs likely to use them or, more probably, written formulae or processes for rational analysis of a problem. But that would be in some sort of document, which would not be a ‘piece’ in general usage of that term and would still suffer the problem of there being rather more documents created than people who needed to use them, unless an awful lot were made for training. Anyway, documents don’t qualify as hardware.
So I discount these possibilities and think I need to find 140,000 items of something of a military hardware nature produced by the Soviets during The Great Patriotic War, of which 120,000 were designed by the mystery man.
Is that a reasonable deduction?
BTW – a couple of years ago I have had a pleasure of working with a very best scientific collaborator in my entire intellectual life. He was an Aussie - a brilliant, gifted and so old-fashionably honest personality… Mansel Ismay was his name. I don’t know what happened with him. If you have some information, my dear Mr. Rising Sun, just launch a tiny note by our PM. I am assuring yoy that that piece of information will be highly appreciated.
It’s not a name I know. I am afraid that searching Google Australia did not reduce my ingorance, which must be one of the rare occasions that has happened.
I need more clues to solve what I suspect will be, for me, an insoluble problem as my knowledge of RKKA back room boys is even worse than my knowledge of RKKA front room boys, although I have heard of somebody called Zhukov.
No problem, my dear Mr. Rising Sun – that’s why we are at this juncture!
So here is another clue for you: our mysterious personality was also – amongst numerous additional duties! – a highly distinguished professor at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, one of the oldest, largest and most distinguished technical universities on this planet. As a matter of fact, I think that he actually is mentioned somewhere on the university’s home page:
So I discount these possibilities and think I need to find 140,000 items of something of a military hardware nature produced by the Soviets during The Great Patriotic War, of which 120,000 were designed by the mystery man.
Is that a reasonable deduction?
Absolutely, my dear Mr. Rising Sun! And here is another tip for you: The use of those previously mentioned “pieces” dates to the early 14th century.
I am afraid that searching Google Australia did not reduce my ingorance, which must be one of the rare occasions that has happened.
Oh, well… Never mind. You know, sometimes our inquiry upon our dearly beloved Google looks like that old story about the old man from Khartoum, who kept two black sheep in his room. “They remind me” – he said – “of two friends who are dead”. But he never would tell us of whom… :roll:
In the meantime, as always – all the best!
Semyon Lavochkin:confused:
Maybe.
I’ve been working on the basis from the last clue that the mystery man was involved with rockets and that his design saw 120,000 units produced of a total of 140,000.
There aren’t enough aircraft of a given type to get near those figures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II#Military_aircraft_of_all_types , so if it’s Lavochkin he must also have designed something other than aircraft.
Sorry to interrupt you , honorable intellectuals.
Who can say me who is that guy in SS-form?
Gunter Grass.
No, my dear Mr. Sceadugenga – our military VIP celebrity is not Mr. Semyon Lavochkin. Mr. Rising Sun was absolutely correct in his utterly rational calculation: There aren’t enough aircraft of a given type to get near those figures, so if it’s Lavochkin he must also have designed something other than aircraft.
And no, my dear Mr. Rising Sun – not rockets but something else was introduced back there in 14th century, more precisely in 1346 in the famous battle of Crecy.
However, our mysterious guest was deeply connected with the development of the Soviet solid propellant long range ballistic missiles. Nevertheless, that intellectual triumph occured only in january of 1959.
Vasiliy Gavrilovich Grabin? or Grabbin?
Why?
I can’t read your Russian link, but from what I can find I don’t think he fits Librarian’s criteria.
The text is irrelevant, look at the photos!
Now, they aren’t identical but I think that’s within the range of variation to be expected with age. Grabin was also responsible for the first Soviet solid-fuel rocket, and led an artillery design bureau during WW2.
OOPS!
I deleted my last post, which preceded pdf27’s post, while editing and, apparently, while pdf27 was posting his last post.
For the information of other members who might be mystified by pdf27 responding to voices he’s hearing :D, I questioned whether Grabin met all of Librarian’s criteria.
Not any more - using my mod superpowers I restored it
Mein Gott!
Der ModFuhrer can turn back time!
Das ist truly the power of a superpower of the super superpower variety, or an UberModFuhrer.
Which leaves one wondering what powers might be exercised by Firefly, as the Uber UberModFuhrer mit Knight’s Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds?
Best not to find out, methinks.