The medal recipient

LEONID ALEXANDER UMANSKY was born in Nikolaiev, Russia, an industrial and shipbuilding town, on July 23, 1890. His father was a mechanical engineer, and some of his forebears, including a grandfather who pioneered the coal mining industry in southern Russia, were engaged in one form or another of industrial activity. After the usual boyhood training in what we call the elementary and high schools, he enrolled as a student of electrical engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of St. Petersburg from whence he graduated in 1915.