On February 24th 2022 I was woken up at 6:13 am by a mobile phone call. It was my partner, she was pregnant and she’d been in hospital for a few days. She sounded panicked and said, “I need you here now! I’m in labour, the baby is coming!” Shocked and bewildered I got up very quickly and into the car. The radio was on as normal and as I sped to the hospital I heard the news, Russia had invaded Ukraine! My heart sank.
My second son was born at 7:46 am, a beautiful and overwhelming moment! Ever since my life has been turned upside down by a whirlwind of chaos. Two children is an exponential step up from one, it’s been a real challenge. But it’s been nothing compared to what the poor people of Ukraine have been put through. Particularly those who have also welcomed children into the world during this horrible war. I’ve donated to the Red Cross appeal for Ukraine and if you can I’d suggest you donate too. Or do whatever you can.
One of the great tragedies of any conflict is the damage it does to cultural and historical assets. We’ve seen this in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and we’re now witnessing it in Ukraine. It is a country of significant cultural and historical importance, civilization in Ukraine stretches back over 6,000 years. It has played host to Greek, Roman and Viking settlements, and been part of Mongol, Ottoman, Polish, Lithuanian and Russian empires. It has also been independent at points and was the birthplace of the Cossacks, known as the adventurers or free men.
More recently, over the last 100 years, Ukraine has made a significant contribution to computer science. As we know, around the 1940s a lot of computer science work and research was carried out. In Britain and America, Turing and Von Neumann made huge contributions, and in continental Europe Konrad Zuse spent the 30s, 40s and 50s building computers. One other part of the world where work was also progressing was the USSR.
At the heart of this work in the USSR were Ukrainian institutions in Kyiv and Kharkiv such as the National Academy of Sciences, cities being attacked by Russian forces today. The scientists working at these institutions made numerous breakthroughs that drove computing forward in the Soviet Union. For instance, in 1941 Vadim Lashkaryov independently discovered p-n junctions, a building block for semiconductors and transistors. Two figures of great importance though, who we will focus on, are Sergey Lebedev and Kateryna Yushchenko. Linked by the work they carried out at the Academy of Sciences on computing during the 1950s they made huge breakthroughs in computer science and software.
Lebedev was a Russian computer scientist who did a great deal of his work at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Kyiv Electrotechnical Institute. Between 1946 and 1951 he was head of the Electrotechnical Institute, and it was here he made his greatest contribution to computer science in the USSR. In 1948 Lebedev learnt about the advances being made with computers in the West and decided to initiate a research project on the topic. This resulted in the creation of MESM in 1951, the first universally programmable computer in the USSR.
MESM had 6,000 vacuum tubes and was capable of executing 3,000 operations a minute. This was relatively small for the time, in comparison ENIAC could execute thousands of operations a second. This though was the USSR’s first step forward with electronic computers and it was achieved by a team of less than 30, whereas ENIAC had a staff of over 200. Computer development also progressed quickly from this point on and the Soviet Union soon caught up with the West.
MESM was in operation until 1959 when it was broken down and used for research. It was used to make numerous calculations and advance research in many areas.
In 1952, MESM was basically the only computer in the country, and was used for calculations for such diverse issues as thermonuclear processes, space flight and rocket science, long-distance power lines, mechanics, statistic quality control, etc.
The Ukrainians were very proud of their computer. To quote Borys Paton, Ukrainian scientist and chairman of the Academy of Sciences.
We will always be proud that in Kyiv, in our Academy, the first computer in continental Europe was created.
It’s not quite true that MESM was the first computer in continental Europe, but it was the first in the USSR and they were right to be proud.
Kateryna Yushchenko was born in Chyhyryn, Ukraine in 1919. She began her studies in 1937 in Kyiv but they were tragically disrupted after her father was arrested for being a Ukrainian nationalist. She was forced to move to Uzbekistan to complete her undergraduate studies and it wasn’t until after the war that she returned to Ukraine. Yushchenko gained her PHD in 1950 from the Institute of Mathematics at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and took on a Senior Researcher role at the institution. In 1954 Yushchenko began to work on Sergey Lebedev’s MESM computer. This was after Lebedev’s laboratory and the MESM computer he developed were transferred to the Institute of Mathematics.
Yushchenko’s great contribution to computer science was the creation of one of the first high-level programming languages. Known as the Address Programming Language it was developed in 1955 to make programming MESM easier and more powerful. It was advanced for its time, including concepts such as Indirect Addressing which wouldn’t be seen in other languages until the 1960s. The Address Programming Language was used for over 20 years and ran on all the first and second-generation computers developed in the Soviet Union.
Yushchenko was lauded for her work and awarded several state prizes.
For pioneering work … Yushchenko was awarded two State Prizes of Ukraine and the Prize of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.
Thanks to the work of Lebedev, Yushchenko and many others Ukraine was one of the main contributors to the development of computers, software and the modern world. A tragic irony of the MESM project is it highlights the successful collaboration between Russia and Ukraine to achieve incredible scientific feats. Something we’re not seeing today, and we can only pray people with power decide to change course.
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