Andrei Tupolev

Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev, born on 10 November 1888 and died on 23 December 1972, was a Russian and later Soviet aeronautical engineer known for his pioneering aircraft designs as the director of the Tupolev Design Bureau. He was an early pioneer of aeronautics in Russia and a protege of Nikolay Zhukovsky. Over 50 years Tupolev designed or oversaw the design of more than 100 types of civilian and military aircraft in the Soviet Union, some of which set 78 world records, including the Tu-2, Tu-16, Tu-95 and Tu-104. He received the Hero of Socialist Labor three times, became an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1953 and was honoured abroad by the Royal Aeronautical Society. The design bureau he led became the company now called Tupolev.