Mikhail Yangel

Mikhail Kuzmich Yangel, born on 7 November 1911 in Irkutsk and died in Moscow on 25 October 1971, was a Soviet engineer who became the leading designer in the missile program of the Soviet Union. He began as an aviation engineer after graduating from the Moscow Aviation Institute in 1937 and worked with the aircraft designers Nikolai Polikarpov and Artem Mikoyan, then moved to ballistic missiles, first in charge of guidance systems. As an associate of Sergei Korolev he set up a rocket propulsion centre in Dnepropetrovsk, which in 1954 became the basis of his own design bureau, OKB-586, now KB Pivdenne, which he directed until 1971. The bureau mass-produced and developed intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Yangel was a pioneer of storable hypergolic fuels. It designed the R-12, R-16 and R-36, whose launch vehicle versions are known as Kosmos, Tsyklon and Dnepr. He received the Lenin Prize in 1960 and the USSR State Prize in 1967.