About the book: 2011 / Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev is an outstanding Russian aircraft designer who led the design and production of one hundred types of aircraft, which largely determined the face of world aviation in the 20th century. He is also a developer of torpedo boats, gliders, amphibians, snowmobiles, and airships. A student of HE Zhukovsky, together with him he was the founder of the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) - a powerful aviation research center, and then headed his own design bureau. The key to Tupolev’s successful work is talent and deep knowledge, large-scale thinking and attention to the smallest details, exceptional determination and complete dedication, the ability to lead and make the only right decision under personal responsibility. He enjoyed enormous authority in the state, which, thanks to his activities, received powerful strategic aviation. He is the only person in the history of aviation whose first airplane took off in 1923, and in 1968, almost half a century later, he flew his first supersonic passenger airliner - Tu-144.