ABSTRACT
I first heard of YaB from my supervisor Kirill Petrovich Stanyukovich, who arrived at the Physics Department of Moscow State University in the autumn of 1955 at the invitation of Academician Mikhail Aleksandrovich Leontovich. Stanyuk-as he was called by his friends, but certainly not by us forth-year students-began to give a wonderfully brilliant course on hydro-and gas-dynamics. Having come to listen to him initially mostly out of curiosity, I remained to do a preliminary research project with him, then my undergraduate thesis. For six years, I regularly went to his home, as he loved receiving guests. Once, he merrily told me about a birthday celebration for YaB, as he called him, who was then still a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences, but who had recently become a triple Hero of the Socialist Labour. A group of friends had ordered a bust of YaB from Sarra Lebedeva, a major Soviet sculptor of that time (this bust is referred to several times in other contributions in this book). During the presentation, a ‘Decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR’ was read, ordering the installation of the bust in the flat of the Hero (in real decrees of this sort, this would read the birthplace of the Hero; in the other contributions, no one noted this). There were some very amusing details, but I can’t remember them.
