Otto Schmidt

Otto Yulyevich Shmidt, born Otto Friedrich Julius Schmidt and better known as Otto Schmidt, was a Soviet scientist, mathematician, astronomer, geophysicist, statesman and academician, born in Mogilev in the Russian Empire in 1891. In 1912 and 1913, while still a student, he published mathematical works on group theory that laid the foundation for the Krull-Schmidt theorem. He graduated from the Saint Vladimir Imperial University of Kiev in 1913, later served in several Soviet commissariats, directed the State Publishing House from 1921 to 1924 and was chief editor of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia from 1924 to 1941. He headed the Arctic Institute from 1930 to 1932 and from 1932 to 1939 led Glavsevmorput, the agency that oversaw commercial operations on the Northern Sea Route.