Lev Loktev
Lev Abramovich Loktev (Russian: ) (August 25, 1908 - April 28, 1981) was a Soviet artillery designer and served as the chief designer at Mikhail Kalinin Plant No.8 in Podlipki, now part of Korolyov, Moscow Oblast. Early life Lev Abramovich Loktev was born in Kiev as the smaller of the eight sons to a Jewish family. His father, Abram Solomonovich Loktev, and his grandfather were steam engine specialists in Kiev, and Abram Loktev created his own bicycle workshop in Kiev in 1912. Abram Loktev was killed when he participated in the First World War from a gas attack in 1918, when Lev Loktev was nine. Lev Loktev graduated from secondary school in 1924 and entered a factory-school, the Mikhail Ratmansky school-plant with Yiddish teaching, while at the same time working as a machinist. After graduation Loktev entered the Kiev Polytechnic Institute where he studied for only a year before being sent to the military mechanical department of the Leningrad Machine-building Institute (LMI, now the Baltic State Technical University) by the Komsolmol, as part of a group of students, when the Soviet Union needed artillery designers. Career Lev Loktev graduated from the Institute in 1933, defended his thesis and was sent