Academician Ivannikov Victor Petrovich

The article is dedicated to Victor Ivannikov, a prominent Russian scientist who worked in computer science, primarily system programming. His practical work was primarily related to the development of operating systems to manage multicomputer heterogeneous systems. The AS-6 multi-machine complex developed with his active participation was used in the Apollo-Soyuz space flight control, the first international space mission, carried out jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union. In the difficult period of the 1990s, when funding for new computer developments in Russia almost wholly ceased, he created the Institute for System Programming. Now it is a successful institute actively participating in international research programs and practical projects. He was an active participant in the Central-East European Initiative of the IEEE Computer Society, designed to remove the barriers that prevented scientists from socialist countries from participating in international cooperation during the Cold War. He was the founder and first head of the systems programming departments at three leading Russian universities. He achieved a lot in his life. However, he considered the most important achievement of his life that he succeeded to found the Institute for System Programming. The Institute, in which system programming is not tied to a specific computer model, but system programming is the dominant discipline as a scientific direction. An institute in which an “atmosphere of creative brotherhood” would prevail. He considered this to be the essential condition for creative work and the achievement of high scientific results.