Alexander Lerner

Alexander Lerner was born in 1913 in Vinnytsia

Lerner was born in 1913 to a Jewish family in Vinnytsia, then part of the Russian Empire. His father was a pharmacist who owned a drugstore. He finished a 7-year school early and then studied at an electromechanical college, training as a technician-engineer.

He earned a degree in electrical engineering from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute in 1938 and a Ph.D. there in 1940. During World War II he installed US equipment at a steel mill in Siberia. In 1943 he returned to Moscow as chief engineer of a central laboratory at the Soviet Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy.

Lerner worked in cybernetics. His mathematical equations were used to forecast supply and demand for materials such as steel and to allocate scarce resources.

He was the first prominent Soviet scientist to ask to emigrate to Israel. The request was refused and he lost his positions and privileges. In 1977 the newspaper Izvestiya published a letter calling him the leader of a spy nest, and his associates Natan Sharansky, Vladimir Slepak and Ida Nudel were arrested.

In 1988 he received an exit permit and moved to Israel with his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter. He joined the mathematics department at the Weizmann Institute of Science, working on an artificial heart and a model of developed societies. He died in Rehovot in 2004.