Legendary Space Engineer Retires

Dmitry Kozlov is the engineer who designed rocket stages that took first cosmonaut Yury Gagarin to space
Chief designer, the director general of the state research and production space bureau TsSKB-Progress (Samara) Dmitry Kozlov is resigning from July 1. He told a Rosbalt correspondent he would retire on a pension. This year Dmitry Kozlov turns 84; last spring the designer was operated on his heart.  

Dmitry Kozlov has been at head of the Samara space center for 45 years since 1958 when Sergey Korolev, the Soviet rocket engineer sent him to the aircraft construction enterprise in the city of Kuybyshev (now called Samara) to start production of R-7 rockets.  The first two stages of the rocket that took the first cosmonaut Yury Gagarin to space were produced by the Kuybyshev bureau headed by Dmitry Kozlov. Later, the space design bureau produced the rocket carriers "Vostok", "Voskhod", "Molnia", "Soyuz" and 21 satellites meant for military and civil purposes. It is not decided yet who will take the post over. 
 
Rosbalt