The Russian aeronautical engineer and army officer Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev (1888-1972) was the leading designer of large and heavy aircraft in the former U.S.S.R.

Andrei Tupolev was born on Nov. 10, 1888, in the village of Pustomazovo (now Kalinin Oblast). In 1909 he entered the Moscow Higher Technical College, studied under Nikolai Egorovich Zhukovskii, the "father of Russian aviation," built wind tunnels as a student, and participated in the college's aeronautical club. It is believed that he received further training under Hugo Junkers, who set up an aircraft construction facility in Fili, a suburb outside of Moscow, under a 1922 Russo-German agreement. After graduation Tupolev assisted Zhukovskii in organizing the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute, where he was assistant director from 1918 to 1935 and headed its design bureau beginning in 1922.

Tupolev's early work centered on wind tunnels and training gliders. He became a pioneer in the construction of all-metal aircraft fabricated out...