Leonid I. Sedov

Leonid Ivanovitch Sedov (14 November 1907 – 5 September 1999) was a leading physicist of the Soviet Union.

In 1930 Sedov graduated from the University of Moscow, where he had been a student of Sergey Chaplygin, with the degree of Doctor of Physics and Mathematical Sciences. He later became a professor at the university.

During World War II, he devised the so-called Sedov Similarity Solution for a blast wave. He was the first chairman of the USSR Space Exploration program and broke first news of its existence in 1955. He was president of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) from 1959 to 1961. Until recently, it had been thought that Sedov was the principal engineer behind the Soviet Sputnik project.