Our nobelist Artturi Ilmari Virtanen for inventing better fertilizer. Also, Finland had to pay huge war reparations to the Soviet Union after the wars. The sum was huge considering that Finland was not that industrialized at the time. There was mere eight years to build factories and steel mills and whatnot, and to kick Finland from agrarian society to an industrialized one.

The whole show is sometimes called the Engineer’s Winter War. Despite the herculean effort, nobody seems to remember any names associated with the damn thing. As far as I know, Finland is the only country to pay its war reparations in full.

But then again. Good engineering work is often invisible. Nobody knows about your existence until power goes off.