About Nikolai Kardashev
Nikolai Semyonovich Kardashev (25 April 1932 – 3 August 2019) was a Soviet and Russian astrophysicist best known for the Kardashev scale, which measures a civilization's status in technological evolution based on the amount of energy it is capable of harnessing and using. He was also the deputy director of the Astro Space Center of the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. == Early life == He was born in Moscow to a family of professional revolutionaries involved with the Bolshevik Party. His parents were Semyon Karlovich Brike and Nina Nikolaevna Kardasheva; his father was an important member of the party, and his mother joined as well before the October Revolution in 1917. Both of his parents were arrested during the Great Purge of 1937 and 1938. His father was ultimately shot and his mother was assigned to labor camps and would not be released for many years. Due to his parents’ absence, he was sent to an orphanage from which he was then taken by his mother's sister after a great deal of effort. His aunt then died during World War II when he was 16 years old and he then had to live on his own in a large communal flat. His mother was released in 1956, by which time Nikolai had completed university. == Education == He attended Moscow State University in the astronomy division of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics.
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