Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich
in Saint Petersburg April 7
) (Леонид Витальевич Канторович)
was a Soviet
. He is famous for his theory and development of techniques for the optimal allocation of resources. He was the winner of the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
in 1975 and the only winner of this prize from the USSR
Kantorovich worked for the Soviet government. He was given the task of optimizing production in a plywood industry. He came up (1939) with the mathematical technique now known as linear programming, some years before it was reinvented and much advanced by George Dantzig. He authored several books including The Mathematical Method of Production Planning and Organization and The Best Uses of Economic Resources.
The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences, which he shared with Tjalling Koopmans, was given "for their contributions to the theory of optimal allocation of resources."