Alexander Ivanovich Mikhailov

Who was Alexander Ivanovich Mikhailov?

Alexander Ivanovich Mikhailov, or A. I. Mikhailov was a Russian/Soviet Engineer and Information Scientist. He was one of the most influential thinkers related to the field of Information Science in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc.

Mikhailov graduated in 1931 in Mechanical Engineering from the Mendeleev Institute and had a successful career in plane and aircraft engineering in the 1930s and 1940s. At the beginning of the 1950s, he participated in the creation and development of the Vserossijsky Institut Nauchnoi I Tekhnicheskoy Informatsii, or VINITI, an institute devoted to the study and practice of Scientific Information in Russia. The institute opened in 1952, and Mikhailov became director from October 1956 until his death.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, Mikhailov had considerable participation in the International Federation for Information and Documentation, became two times vice-director of the institute, coordinating the Study Committee Research on Theoretical Basis of Information, or FID/RI and became the editor-in-chief of the institute periodical, International Forum for Information and Documentation, between 1975 and 1988.