1 December] 1853) was a Russian government official, noted both as a homeopath and an inventor who was involved with an early version of information technology.

Though Korsakov was not formally trained as a doctor, he was interested in medicine, possibly because of the difficulty in getting medical care in the rural area where he lived.

While working in the statistics department of the Police Ministry, Korsakov became intrigued with the possibility of using machinery to "enhance natural intelligence".

The purpose of the devices was primarily to facilitate the search for information, stored in the form of punched cards[citation needed] or similar media (for example, wooden boards with perforations).

Korsakov presented his ideas to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg, but their experts rejected his application, failing to see the potential of mechanizing searches through large stores of information.