Leonid Khachiyan

Khachiyan was born on May 3, 1952, in Leningrad to Armenian parents Genrikh Borisovich Khachiyan, a mathematician and professor of theoretical mechanics, and Zhanna Saakovna Khachiyan, a civil engineer. He had two brothers: Boris and Yevgeniy (Eugene). His family moved to Moscow in 1961, when he was nine. He received a master's degree from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. In 1978 he earned his Ph.D. in computational mathematics/theoretical mathematics from the Computer Center of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and in 1984 a D.Sc. in computer science from the same institution. ==Career==

Khachiyan began his career at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, working as a researcher at the academy's Computer Center in Moscow. He also worked as an adjunct professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. In 1979 he stated: "I am a theoretical mathematician and I'm just working on a class of very difficult mathematical problems." Khachiyan immigrated to the United States in 1989. He first taught at Cornell University as a visiting professor. In 1990 he joined Rutgers University as a visiting professor. He became professor of computer science at Rutgers in 1992. By 2005, he held the position of Professor II at Rutgers, reserved for those faculty who have achieved scholarly eminence in their discipline. ==Work on linear programming==

Ellipsoid method Khachiyan is best known for his four-page February 1979 paper that indicated how an ellipsoid method for linear programming can be implemented in polynomial time. and by Peter Gács and Laszlo Lovász in 1981. ==Personal life and death==

Khachiyan spoke Russian and English, but not Armenian. in 1985. They had two daughters, Anna and Nina, who were teenagers at the time of his death. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000. He died of a heart attack in South Brunswick, New Jersey on April 29, 2005, at the age of 52. ==Recognition==

In 1982 he was awarded the prestigious Fulkerson Prize by the Mathematical Programming Society and the American Mathematical Society Khachiyan was considered a "noted expert in computer science whose work helped computers process extremely complex problems." He was called one of the world's most famous computer scientists at the time of his death by Haym Hirsh, chair of the computer science department at Rutgers. "Computer scientists and mathematicians say his work helped revolutionize his field," noted his New York Times obituary. Bahman Kalantari, a friend and colleague at Rutgers, wrote: "Surely, Khachiyan shall always remain to be among the greatest and most legendary figures in the field of mathematical programming." ==References==