Андрей Богданов (Andrei-bogdanoffyandex.ru) · CC BY 3.0

A Soviet mathematician regarded as the founder of linear programming, the technique for allocating scarce resources — labor, materials, machine time — as efficiently as mathematically possible. He developed the core theory inside the Soviet Union, where economic ideas built on market-style optimization sat awkwardly with official doctrine, and was nonetheless awarded the Stalin Prize in 1949. In 1975 the same body of work won him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.