Leonid Kantorovich

Leonid Kantorovich was a Russian mathematician and economist who lived from 1912 to 1986. He is famous for two things. First, he developed an area of math called "linear programming", which is a way of solving problems that involve making the best decision from a set of choices. Second, he was the first person to win the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1975, for his work on using linear programming to optimize the way businesses use resources like money, labor, materials, and so on. Kantorovich showed how businesses could use mathematics to make more money, leading to more efficient and profitable operations. In simpler terms, he showed how math can be used to solve problems in the business world and suggested ways to make it work better.