Alexander Alexandrovich Andronov (1901–1952) was one of the founders of the radiophysics faculty of Lobachevsky University.
He was a man of great noise — with a loud voice, bold deeds, and resounding fame. Even after becoming a celebrated scientist, he never acquired the gravity or pomposity that might have been expected of him, remaining youthfully energetic and restless.
By birth, Alexander Alexandrovich was a Muscovite, though his family roots lay in the depths of the Vyatka backwoods, in the small town of Yaransk, where his maternal grandfather — a merchant of the second guild — was counted among the most prosperous entrepreneurs in the area.
He finished secondary school at seventeen, at the height of the Civil War in Russia. He began working at a factory as a quality-control inspector, then joined a military food-requisitioning detachment and was sent to the Urals, where he served in a political department. After a serious illness, Andronov was deemed unfit for military service and enrolled at the Moscow Higher Technical School (MHTS) in its electrical engineering faculty. Science became his true calling, and a passion for mathematics led him to transfer to the physics and mathematics faculty of Moscow State University, which he successfully completed in 1925. Graduate studies gave him the opportunity to begin work on the theory of nonlinear oscillations — work that he continued in Nizhny Novgorod, where Alexander Alexandrovich and his wife moved in 1931 to work at the physics and technology institute and at the newly reopened Nizhny Novgorod University. He spent the rest of his life in the city on the Volga River that he had grown to love. The young scientist was consumed by the idea of building scientific centers in the provinces. Andronov attracted talented young people to him like a magnet, and this allowed him to create a scientific school that earned recognition throughout the world. The monograph Theory of Oscillations, published in the 1930s, along with the works of his followers and students, was promptly translated abroad. New developments made it possible to apply the theoretical findings in practice, putting the research results to use in radiophysics and radio engineering, in automatic control theory, vibration engineering and cyclic automation, gyroscopy, nuclear power, and much else besides. Then the war began. Yet it did not interrupt his scientific pursuits. And Professor Andronov's daily life was no different from that of his fellow citizens in this city behind the front lines. To keep the family fed, his wife and collaborator Yevgenia Alexandrovna Leontovich was forced to set aside her own research and take a job as a teacher at a rural school, where she was also given a plot of land to grow the indispensable potato. Andronov himself, during German air raids, took his turn on the roof of his building on Minin Street together with the other residents, to prevent fires from incendiary bombs. He did not set himself apart from others, preferring a Spartan way of life to the privileges he found wholly unacceptable. Immediately after the war, the country's first radiophysics faculty was established at the university, and Andronov was one of its founders. He boldly worked ahead of his time. On his initiative, the university began building a digital computing machine. Alexander Alexandrovich took a resolute stand in defense of cybernetics, which the authorities had declared a harmful science being imposed by the West. For all his devotion to his principal work, this outstanding scientist showed a genuine interest in literature — Pushkin's in particular — as well as in painting and music; he loved spending time in nature and played volleyball with great enthusiasm. Turning to local history, he established the birth date of Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, and it was on his initiative that the university was named after the great mathematician. Andronov did not live to old age, but his legacy spans an entire century — no less, and perhaps even more.