ABOUT ACCOMPLISHED RUSSIAN AMERICANS: This thumbsnail Bio project began in 2006 to help visitors become familiar with a few of the Russian Americans who have contributed to the American experience. It was initiated by Tamara Pozdnyakova, a very supportive RACH-C board member, who collected and prepared material about many of the featured individuals. The enties below grow as additional volunteers collect and contribute items.
Other Russian American organizations also work to preserve information about Russian Americans. The Russian Nobility Association in America, for instance, has written about Famous Russians in their own style, in the “Russian Nobility Association Bulletin” in both the English and Russian languages. We have received permission to post here these very interesting materials from the Bulletin of the Russian Nobility Association in America:
RNA Vol. 1 SPRING 2010
RNA Vol. 2 WINTER 2010/SPRING 2011
RNA VOL. 3 WINTER 2011 / SPRING 2012
The following entries were provided by RACH-C volunteeers:
Abrikosov, Alexei Alexeevich (born in 1928) – is a Russian theoretical physicist whose main contributions are in the field of condensed matter physics. Since 1949 till 1965 – worked in the Institute for Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Science, where in 1951 he received his Ph. D. for the theory of thermal diffusion in plasmas and then, in 1995, the next degree – Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Science for a thesis on quantum electrodynamics at high energies. In 1965 – 1988 Abrikosov worked in the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics at the USSR Academy of Science. Since 1965 he worked as a professor of the Moscow State University. From 1987 till 1991 Abrikosov was an academician of the USSR Academy of Science. Abrikosov discovered the way in which magnetic flux can penetrate a superconductor. Since 1991 Abrikosov works in the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory in the USA. He is a citizen of both Russian and the United States of America.
Asimov, Isaac (1920 –1992) – A Russian-born American author and professor of biochemistry, was a highly successful writer best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 9,000 letters and postcards. A master of the science-fiction genre Asimov, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, was considered one of the “Big Three” science-fiction writers during his lifetime. Asimov’s most famous work is the Foundation Series; his other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series, both of which he later tied into the same fictional universe as the Foundation Series to create a unified “future history” for his stories. He penned numerous short stories, among them “Nightfall”, which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time, a title many still honor. He also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as a great amount of nonfiction, and the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels under the pen name Paul French. Asimov was born in Petrovichi (Smolensk Oblast, Russia) into a Jewish family of millers. His family immigrated to the United States when he was three years old. Around the age of eleven he began to write his own stories, and by age nineteen, having discovered science fiction fandom, he was selling them to the science fiction magazines. Asimov attended New York City Public Schools and went to Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1939, returning after WW II to earn a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1948. Among his numerous awards were 14 honorary doctorate degrees from various universities. In 1997, he was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Balanchine, George (1904–1983) – the Russian-born American choreographer, is one of the most prominent in the history of ballet, particularly in the neoclassical style. The son of a composer, Balanchine was born Georgy Melitonovich Balanchivadze in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He was trained at the Imperial Ballet Academy and studied composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. His early works, for the 1922 series Evenings of Young Ballet, were criticized as too avant-garde. In 1925, while touring in Europe with his small company, he joined the Diaghilev Company in Paris as a choreographer. After the impresario Sergei Diaghilev died in 1929, Balanchine choreographed for several companies, and in 1933 he organized his own group, Les Ballets. At the invitation of American ballet patron Lincoln Kirstein, Balanchine moved to New York City and together they founded the School of American Ballet in 1933 and the American Ballet Company in 1935. Balanchine’s style ranged from classical stagings to choreography for more contemporary composers, including the works of Americans George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers. After the American Ballet Company dissolved in 1938, Balanchine’s work for The Boys from Syracuse (1938) and the famous ballet sequence “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” in On Your Toes (1936) established ballet as a permanent element of the musical. With Kirstein he co-founded Ballet Society in 1946, which in 1948 became the New York City Ballet. Under Balanchine’s direction, the company became one of the world’s great performing groups, with a repertory consisting largely of his ballets.
Basil (Rodzianko), Bishop (1915-1999) – His Grace the Right Reverend Bishop Basil (Rodzianko) of San Francisco was a prominent Orthodox personality through his religious radio programs that were broadcast to the Soviet Union over a period of forty years. Born Vladimir Rodzianko in Ekaterinoslav, Russia (now Ukraine) he was from a prominent Russian family. His grandfather, Michael Rodzianko, was the president of the Russian Imperial Duma during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II. After the Revolution of 1917, his family emigrated to Serbia, Yugoslavia in 1919 where he attended Russian schools. His two interests were the priesthood and the emerging radio technology. He continued his education studying theology at the University of Belgrade from which he graduated in 1937. He then continued post-graduate studies at the University of London. Returning to Yugoslavia, he was ordained a deacon and then a priest in Serbia in March 1941. Fr. Vladimir served as a priest in a number of villages in northern Yugoslavia until 1949 enduring first the Nazi occupation and then that of the communists. He was arrested for his beliefs and sentenced to eight years hard labor. While forbidden to perform religious services, he secretly practiced his ministry Orthodox prisoners. In 1949, he was released from prison and traveled to France and then settled in England. Fr. Vladimir was offered a position broadcasting on BBC. For the next forty years, he produced religious programs broadcast to the Soviet Union and lectured widely on Orthodoxy. The effectiveness of his broadcasts made him a target of an assassination attempt which brought a tragedy to the family when his teenage grandson was killed. With the death of his wife in 1978, Fr. Vladimir was tonsured a monk in 1979, taking the name Basil. After taking his vows in England, Hieromonk Basil was received by the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) from the Moscow Patriarchate. After his arrival in the United States in 1980, Hieromonk Basil was consecrated Bishop of Washington and later became bishop of the Diocese of San Francisco and West where he served until his retirement in 1984. Bishop Basil was a shining example of the Christian life and an inspiration to thousands.
Berlin, Irving (1888-1989) – was born in Tymen, Russia. His family immigrated to the United States in 1893. In 1911 he wrote a song that had lunched his career. In 1917, during the First World War he entered the United States Army and staged a musical revue “Yip Yip Yaphnk”. Later Berlin composed a song entitled “God Bless America” for the show, but decided not to use it. When it was released years late this song became so popular that was suggested to become a National Anthem. It still remains one of the most popular and successful songs in the United States.
Brin, Serge (1973-08-21) – (age 34) is a Russian born American entrepreneur who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin currently holds the position of President of Technology at Google and has a net worth estimated at $18.5 billion as of March 9, 2007, making him the 26th richest person in the world and the 5th richest person in the United States, together with Larry Page. He is also the fourth youngest billionaire in the world Contents. Brin was born in Moscow, in the Soviet Union to a Jewish family, His parents, both mathematicians. Brin received his Bachelor of Science degree high honors from the University of Maryland. He earned his Master’s degree in Computer Science in 1995 ahead of schedule and is in the process of his Ph.D. studies. Brin has also received an honorary MBA from the Instituto de Empresa Business School. While in Stanford, Brin authored and co-authored various papers on data-mining and pattern extraction. He also wrote software to ease the process of putting scientific papers often written in TeX, a text-processing language, into HTML form, as well as a website for film ratings. The defining moment for Brin, however, was when he met future co-president of Google, Larry Page. Their common interest was retrieving relevant information from large data sets. Together, the pair authored what is widely considered their seminal contribution, a paper entitled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.” The paper has since gone on to become the tenth-most accessed scientific paper at Stanford University.
Brodsky, Josef Aleksandrovich (1940-1996) – was born in 1940 in Leningrad. Brodsky began to write when he was eighteen years old. His writings were apolitical. In 1963 he was arrested by the Soviet Authorities. From March 1964 until November 1965, Brodsky lived in exile in the Arkhangelsk region of northern Russia; he had been sentenced to five years in exile at hard labor for “social parasitism,” but did not serve out his term. In 1980 after brief stays in Vienna and London Brodsky came to the United States. He has been Poet-in-Residence and Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Queens College, Smith College, Columbia University, and Cambridge University in England. He currently is Five College Professor of Literature at Mount Holyoke College. In 1981, Brodsky was a recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s award for his works of “genius”. In 1987 Brodsky became the fifth Russian-born writer who won the Nobel Prize (for Literature). At an interview in Stockholm to a question: “You are an American citizen who is receiving the Prize for Russian-language poetry. Who are you, an American or a Russian?” – he responded: “I am Jewish” (chapter by Simon Markish). In 1991 Brodsky became Poet Laureate of the United States.
Brynner, Yul (1920-1985) – born in Vladivostok, Russia. In 1942, during Second World War he was working as an announcer on a French speaking radio and a commentator for the US Office of War Information. His movie career started in 1956. He appeared in many movies of the United States. He is well known as a Broadway and Academy Award winning Hollywood actor.
Bu
rliuk, David Davidovich (1882‒1967) was a Russian and American avant-garde artist, book illustrator, publicist, and author associated with Russian Futurism and Neo-Primitivist. Born in the Ukraine to a Cossack family, his father sold his farm and worked as a manager in different estates, moving frequently from place to place. Since the age of ten, Burliuk had was interested in painting. In 1898-1899 he studied at Kazan and Odessa art schools, in 1902-1905 attended the Munich Royal Academy of Arts. His extroverted character was recognized by Anton Azhbe, his professor at the Munich Academy, who called Burliuk a “wonderful wild steppe horse.” On his return to Russia, Burliuk became close with the left artists and participated in art numerous exhibitions. In 1908 together with Wladimir aranoff-Rossine, Alexander Bogomazov, Volodymyr (Wladimir) Burliyuk and Aleksandra Ekster, he organized an exhibition of the group Zveno (“The Link” in Kiev. In 1909-1910 Burliuk united the young poets) and artists who repudiated aesthetics of symbolism. They searched for new ways to develop poetry and art. Later they will name themselves the futurists. About that time Burliuk met Mayakovsky who named him “his real teacher” From 1910 to 1911 he attended the Art School in Odessa and from 1911 to 1913 he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. From 1918 to 1922, he traveled to the United States, Siberia, Japan, and Canada. In 1925 Burliuk was a co-founder of the Association of Revolutionary Masters of Ukraine. In 1927, he participated in an exhibition of the Latest Artistic Trends in the Russian Museum in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). David Burliuk was author of autobiographical sketches My Ancestors, Forty Years: 1890‒1930. He continued to write and paint pictures and from 1937 to 1966 published magazine “Color and Rhyme “. In 1956, Burlyuk visited the Soviet Union. In 1962 he and his wife traveled to Australia where he held an exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery. Without question his two images captured his imagination; the face of his wife and the portrait of his homeland – first Russia and Ukraine and then his adopted country, the United States.
Dobuzhinsky, Mstislav (1875-1957) was a Russian artist noted for his paintings, graphic works, book illustrations and theater designs. Born in Novgorod, Russia, his father was an artillery officer of noble Lithuanian extraction and his Russian mother was an opera singer. He spent his early years in Vilnius where he finished Men’ Gymnasium. He first studied art from 1885 to 1887 at the School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in St. Petersburg and then enrolled to St. Petersburg University from where he graduated in Law in 1898. Unwilling to give up his interest in art, in 1899, he went to Munich to study under Anton Azbé and Simon Hollósy. While in Germany he came to be influenced by the Jugendstil artists (Art Nouveau style). Having returned to Russia, Dobuzhinsky made the acquaintance of Alexandre Benois and Leon Bakst and joined the Mir iskusstva (The World of Art), a circle aimed at promoting artistic individualism and other principles of Art Nouveau. Dobuzhinsky was distinguished by his expressionist manner and keen interest in modern industrial cityscape. In 1924 Dobuzhinsky left Russia and lived in Lithuania, spending considerable time in Europe, especially in Paris and in 1939 Dobuzhinsky moved to the United States and settled in New York City. As a stage designer, he worked first for Constantin Stanislavski at the Moscow Arts Theatre, and later designed sets for several Diagilev’ productions. Dobuzhinsky also worked as theatre designer in the “Old Theatre” and Kommissarzhevskaya’ Theatre (1907); Moscow Arts Theatre (1909 -1917); Ballets Russes in Paris (1914); for Cinizelli Circus (1918) and Big Drama Theatre in Petrograd (1919-1921). Between 1924 and 1929 Dobuzhinsky created sets for theatre productions for Dresden Opera and Riga Chamber Theatres, well as for theatres in London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Düsseldorf. As an illustrator, he collaborated with edition “Art Treasures of Russia” (1903), with the revolutionary satirical journals “Zhupel” and “Infernal Post” (1905-1906), the art magazine “The Golden Fleece” (1906-1907), “Satyricon” (1908-1911) and “New Satyricon” (1913), the art magazine “Apollon” (1909-1913). The artist illustrated many children books and art literature (1919-1923). Among his later works are series of masterful and dramatic illustrations, notably for Dostoyevsky’ White Nights (1923).
Douglas, Kirk (1916) – his birth name is Issur Danielovitch (Demsky). He was born in Amsterdam. New York. His parents emigrated from Belorussia. After the war he started doing Radio Theater and commercials, trying to break in on Broadway. He got the first film role in 1946. Kirk Douglas played an important role in breaking the Hollywood blacklist. He is also father to Hollywood actor and producer Michael Douglas.
Gamow, George (1904-1968) – born in Russia. He was educated at the Novorossiva University in Odessa in 1922-23 and at the University of Leningrad (1923-1929). In 1934 he moved to the United States. In 1934 he started to work at George Washington University, where he published articles with Edward Teller, Mario Schoenberg and Ralph Alpher. George Gamow became a naturalized American in 1940. He discovers quantum tunneling, worked on radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis, big bang nucleosynthesis, nucleocosmogenesis and genetics.
Gershwin, George (1898-1937) – was born in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants. In 1919 he recorded his first big national hit with his song “Swanee”. In 1924, Gershwin composed his first classical work, Rhapsody in Blue for orchestra and piano. George Gershwin was inducted into the “Long Island Music Hall of Fame” in 2006. Also there is a theater named after him called the “George Gershwin Theater” where the Hit Broadway Musical “Wicked’ is now playing.
Ipatiev, Vladimir (1867-1952) – born in Moscow. Studied chemistry in Russia and Germany. His work on catalysis methods under high pressure made him famous as a chemist. Before the October revolution he was member of the “Russian Academy of Sciences”. After the revolution he was heading and creating several important chemical research centers in Soviet Russia. In 1930 Vladimir Ipatiev went to Germany and then moved to the United States. He is considered one of the founding fathers of the modern petroleum chemistry in the US.
Jovovich, Milla (1975) – was born in Kiev, Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, the daughter of Bogdan Bogdanovich Jovovi, a Yugoslav pediatrician of Serbian-Montenegrin extraction and Galina Loginova, a Soviet stage actress of ethnic Ukrainian-Russian descent. At the age of 5, Milla with her parents emigrated from the Soviet Union, moving to the Unite States. Milla Jovovich is a model, actress, musician, and fashion designer. Over her career, she has appeared in a number of science fiction and action themed films. Jovovich attended public schools shortly after arriving in the United States, and learned fluent English in three months. During school, many of the students had teased her because she had immigrated from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Jovovich said, “I was called a Commie and a Russian spy. I was never, ever, ever accepted into the crowd”. At age twelve in seventh grade, Jovovich left school to focus on her growing career. Jovovich began modeling at eleven, when Richard Avedon featured her in Revlon’s and L’Oreal cosmetics, Banana Republic, Christian Dior, Donna Karan and Versace. In 1988, she had her first professional acting role in the television film The Night Train to Kathmandu, and later that year she appeared in her first feature film, Two Moon Junction. She gained notoriety with the romance film Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991), the sequel to The Blue Lagoon. Jovovich then acted alongside Bruce Willis in the science fiction film The Fifth Element (1997), and later played the title role in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999). In 2002, she starred in the video game adaptation, Resident Evil, which has gone on to spawn two sequels: Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) and Resident Evil: Extinction (2007). In addition to her modeling and acting career, Jovovich released a critically acclaimed musical album, The Divine Comedy in 1994. In 2003, she and model Carmen Hawk created the clothing line Jovovich-Hawk. Jovovich also has her own production company, Creature Entertainment.
Kuznets, Simon (1901-1985) – he was born in Russia. Studied in Kharkov, Ukraine. Later, in 1992, he moved to the United States and was educated at Columbia University. In 1923 he received his B.Sc. and Ph. D. in 1926. Kuznets won the 1971 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel “for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development”.
Leontief, Wassily (1905-1999) – he is a son of Wassily W. Leontief (professor of Economics), who belonged to a dynasty of old-believer merchants living in St. Petersburg since 1741. His mother belonged to a wealthy Jewish family from Odessa. Wassily entered the University of Leningrad in 1921 and earned his Learned Economist degree in 1924. In 1925 he was allowed to leave the USSR. And in 1931 he went to the United States where was employed by the “National Bureau of Economic Research”. Wassily Leontief was notable for his research on how changes in one economic sector may have an effect on other sectors. He won a “Nobel Prize in Economics” in 1973
Prokofiev de Seversky, Alexander Nikolaievich (1894–1974) – was a Russian-American aviation pioneer, inventor, and influential advocate of strategic air power. Of noble Russian parentage, Seversky was born in Tiflis. He served as a Russian naval aviator in World War I, lost a leg in combat, and continued to fly, shooting down six German aircraft. In 1917 he was in the U.S. as a member of the naval aviation mission and decided to stay. He worked as a test pilot and became an assistant to air power advocate
General Billy Mitchell, aiding him in his push to prove airpower’s ability to sink battleships. Seversky applied for and received the first patent for air-to-air refueling in 1921. He founded the Seversky Aircraft Corporation in 1931, later reorganized as the Republic Aviation Company, which was successful and produced many planes, including the famous Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. Seversky was the author of the influential 1942 book, Victory Through Air Power, which Disney adapted into a motion picture. Seversky argued for the immediate development of longrange bombers, specifically intercontinental bombers capable of directly striking Germany and Japan from the U.S. without refueling. He urged the shift of manufacturing resources away from traditional land- and sea-based armaments and air-support aircraft and toward these bombers. He was one of a number of strategic air advocates whose vision was realized in the 1946 creation of the Strategic Air Command and the development of aircraft such as the Convair B-36 and B-47 Stratojet.
Rachmaninoff, Sergei (1873‒1943) was a famous Russian composer, the last great representative of Russian Romanticism in classical music, one of the finest pianist of his day and a prominent conductor. Born in Semyonovo, near Novgorod, Russia, he got his first piano lessons from his mother and studied under well-known Russian composers. In his early years, he showed great skill in composition. At the time of his studies, he met Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who became an important mentor and commissioned Rachmaninoff to arrange a piano transcription of the suite from his ballet The Sleeping Beauty. One stroke of good fortune came when impresario Savva Mamontov, who two years earlier had founded the Moscow Private Russian Opera Company, offered Rachmaninoff the post of assistant conductor for the 1897-8 season. In 1904, Rachmaninoff was offered a job as conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre. He made his first tour of the United States as a pianist in 1909, which made him a popular figure in America. The Russian Revolution of 1917 meant the end of Russia as the composer had known it and in 1918, moved to the United States. Due to his busy concert career, Rachmaninoff’ output as composer slowed tremendously. Between 1918 and his death in 1943, while living in the U.S. and Europe, he completed only six compositions. Of his three symphonies, the second and third are both considered among his greatest works. He also completed three operas, Aleko, The Miserly Knight, and Francesca da Rimini. Rachmaninoff recorded music first for Edison Records on their “Diamond Disc” records, then with the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1920 and with its successor, RCA Victor. Many of Rachmaninoff’ recordings are acknowledged classics.
Saint John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco (1896 – 1966) – He was a noted Eastern Orthodox ascetic and hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). He was a pastor and spiritual father of high reputation and a reputed wonderworker to whom was attributed great powers of prophecy, clairvoyance and healing. St. John was in the village of Adamovka in Kharkov province in what was then southern. He attended Poltava Military School, and received a degree in law from Kharkov Imperial University in 1918. He was evacuated to Belgrade with his family in 1921, where he graduated from Belgrade University with a degree in theology. In 1926 he was tonsured a monk and ordained a hierodeacon by Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), who gave him the name of John. He worked as an instructor and tutor, and then in 1934 he was ordained a bishop and assigned to the diocese of Shanghai. There Bishop John found an uncompleted cathedral and an Orthodox community deeply divided along ethnic lines. Making contact with all the various groups, he quickly involved himself in the existing charitable institutions and personally founded an orphanage and home for the children of indigents. It was here that he first became known for miracles attributed to his prayer, and as a public figure it was impossible for him to completely conceal his ascetic way of life. During the Japanese occupation he routinely ignored the curfew in pursuit of his pastoral activities. As the only Russian hierarch in China who refused to submit to the authority of the Soviet-dominated Russian Orthodox Church, he was elevated to the rank of archbishop by the Holy Synod of ROCOR in 1946. When the Communists took power in China, the Russian colony was forced to flee, first to a refugee camp on the island of Tubabao in the Philippines and then mainly to the United States and Australia. Archbishop John travelled personally to Washington, D.C. to ensure that his people would be allowed to enter the country. In 1951 he was assigned to the archdiocese of Western Europe with his see first in Paris then in Brussels. Thanks to his work in collecting lives of saints, a great many pre-Schism Western saints became known in Orthodoxy and continue to be venerated to this day. His charitable and pastoral work continued here as it had in Shanghai, even among a much more widely scattered flock. In 1962 he was once again reassigned by the Holy Synod to the see of San Francisco. Here too he completed the church building and brought some measure of peace to the community. St. John died while visiting Seattle at a time and place he was said to have foretold. In 1994 he was solemnly glorified on the twenty-eighth anniversary of his death. His feast day is celebrated on the Saturday nearest to the 2nd of July. He is beloved and celebrated worldwide, with portions of his relics located in Serbia, Russia, Mount Athos, Bulgaria, and other countries of the world.
Sikorsky, Igor (1889 – 1972) – aircraft designer. He was born on May 25, 1889 in Kiev. In 1912 he became a chief aircraft designer of the aircraft-designing department of St. Petersburg Russian Baltic factory which was building railway cars. There was built Russia’s first airplane which was the best one in the world. This model was adopted by Russia’s fledging air force and during the World War his airplanes “Ilya Muromets” were successfully used on front. After the Revolution in 1917, when the plant where Sikorsky worked stopped constructing airplanes, he decided to leave Russia for the United States of America. There, looking for an opportunity in the aviation industry, in 1923 he had founded his company “Sikorsky Aero Engineering”. Now his company is a part of United Technologies Corporation. In June, 1931, Igor Sikorsky became the world’s first helicopter inventor. The designer himself piloted this craft on September 14, 1939. Sikorsky’s R4, the world’s first production helicopter, went into service with the US Navy in 1943. His talent coupled with hard work and perseverance paid off in making him one of America’s leading aircraft designers. He was building different types of aircraft, most of them civilian which gave him a chance to realize his lifetime dream of building airplanes that would link together cities and continents. Russia takes pride in the fact that the name of its talented aircraft designer, Igor Sikorsky, has a great impact in the history of world aviation.
Sorokin, Pitirim (1889-1968) – a Russian-American sociologist. After the October Revolution he engaged in anti-Bolshevik activities, for which he was condemned to death the sentence was commuted to exile. In 1923 he emigrated from Russia to the United States. In 1930 he became a naturalized American. There he founded the Department of Sociology at Harvard University (1930-55). He is best known for his contributions to the social cycle theory.
Stravinsky, Igor (1882 –1971) – the Russian composer considered by many in both the West and his native land to be the most influential composer of 20th century music. He was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often for the premières of his own works. Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum, Russia and brought up in Saint Petersburg. Stravinsky enrolled to study law at ed for it. He took private music tutelage from Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1910 he moved to Switzerland and later to France and in 1939 to the United States of America. Stravinsky first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and performed by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (Russian Ballets): L’Oiseau de feu (“The Firebird”) Petrushka , and Le sacre du printemps (“The Rite of Spring”). The Rite, whose premiere provoked a riot, transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure. After this first Russian phase he turned to neoclassicism in the 1920s. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms. In the 1950s he adopted serial procedures, using the new techniques over the final twenty years of his life to write works that were briefer and of greater rhythmic, harmonic, and textural complexity than his earlier music. During the course of his long life he also published a number of books: Chronicles of My Life, written with Alexis Roland-Manuel, Poétique musicale with Roland-Manuel and Pierre Souvtchinsky, and Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (interviews with Robert Craft).
Struve, Otto (1897–1963) – was descended from three generations of noted astronomers. His education at the University of Kharkov was interrupted by World War I and the Russian Civil War, which left him a refugee in Turkey. From there he was invited to Yerkes Observatory, where he completed his doctorate at the University of Chicago and promptly joined the faculty. He directed four observatories — Yerkes, McDonald (which he founded and where a telescope is named for him), Leuschner, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (where he was the first director and encouraged the first search for extraterrestrial intelligence). He edited the Astrophysical Journal for more than 15 years. He made detailed spectroscopic investigations of stars, especially close binaries and peculiar stars, the interstellar medium, where he discovered H II regions, and gaseous nebulae and contributed to the understanding of the broadening of spectral lines due to stellar rotation, electric fields, and turbulence. He was also a pioneer in the study of mass transfer in closely interacting binary stars. Struve wrote more than 900 articles, many of them popular ones, and several books.
Timasheff, Nicholas S. (Nicholas Sergeyevitch)
1886-1970
Nikolas Sergeyevitch Timasheff was born in St. Petersburg in 1886 into a family which produced several high-ranking civil servants in Imperial Russia. His father served as a minister of Industry and Trade in its last government.
The young Timasheff studied law at the University of St. Petersburg where he gained a doctorate in 1914. He also studied in Germany. After the Revolution and the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War Timasheff continued to work at the University of Petrograd and then in the Polytechnical Institute there, intending to stay, while his father was alive in a Soviet prison and until he could leave the country in 1921. He did stay in Russia as long as his father was alive although it was extremely dangerous to himself. Of the other brothers, one was killed in the war, the other died in the epidemic of 1918 and the youngest was a student. Warned that he was going to be arrested, he, his wife, and her younger brother escaped a week after his father died. They lived first in Germany, then he taught at the Russian University in Czechoslovakia. He was married to a very beautiful and extremely talented published poet and writer who spent her life protecting Russian culture and being an official reader during church services.
The family moved to France when Timasheff was invited to work as an Associate editor- in- chief of the daily “Renaissance”. While living there Timasheff participated in scientific conferences all over Europe. During the years 1932-1936 he also lectured in western European universities.
Then, in 1936, as the author of an outstanding and fundamental book, “Introduction to the Sociology of Law,” and with the recommendation of Professor Pitirim Sorokin, he was invited to lecture at Harvard University for a year. In 1939, three months after he started lecturing, Harvard University offered him a contract for 4 more years. Soon he was offered the position of head of the Department of Sociology to replace his friend and colleague, Pitirim Sorokin, a world-famous scientist himself, and instead, he took the honorable and ethical act of refusing the offer and moreover resigning from his position at Harvard.
On the ship back to France he had a conversation with a passenger, who happened to be a scientist from Fordham Graduate School, and in two days Timasheff got a telegram-invitation from the Dean of the Fordham Graduate School to become a faculty member there. He gladly accepted the professorship at Fordham where he remained until his retirement in 1957 while traveling for lectures all over the USA.
Together with Sorokin, he pioneered a new approach to the study of the relationship between law and society and they found themselves rightly considered the fathers of modern legal sociology.
Although sociology and legal sociology remained Timasheff’s main interest in life, other questions continued to claim his attention. He wrote 18 books that were published in 16 languages.
His book “Introduction to the Sociology of Law,” which deals with the order in society, and the law’s role in social control has been characterized as a landmark in the development of the subject. The Book had 28 editions published between 1900 and 2017 in 13 languages.
The exiled Russian sociologist and legal scholar Nicholas S. Timasheff’s place at the forefront of the sociology of law was established with the publication, in 1939, of “An Introduction to the Sociology of Law”. His magnum opus articulates systematic legal sociology. The book’s title is somewhat misleading, giving the impression that the volume is merely a textbook intended for classroom use. It is much more than this. “An Introduction to the Sociology of Law” is a sophisticated treatise that explains, precisely and methodically, the law as a social force. It makes two fundamental points: law can, indeed must, be studied by sociology, and, the law is a combination of socio-ethical and imperative coordination of human behavior. “A continuing thread in “Introduction” is Timasheff’s interest in the dialectical interplay between the positive law and the living law. What is more, he discusses at length what he considers to be the essential systems of thought and action in the social sciences. Timasheff saw sociology’s purpose as the study of similar, related, clusters of social phenomena. Accordingly, Timasheff’s focus is principally on the law’s causal reality.”
Some of his other books were “Religion in Soviet Russia”, “The Great Retreat, The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia”, “War and Revolution”, “Three worlds: liberal, communist, and fascist society”, “Prohibition in contemporary law: a centennial survey”, “ The Crisis in the Marxian theory of law”.
In the last years of his life, Timasheff studied and wrote on the issues of rehabilitation of criminals. With the support of the American government, he went to Holland to teach and study at the University of Groningen where this topic was specially developed.
Upon returning to the USA he retired from teaching, devoting all his time to writing books and scholarly articles while living with his daughter’s family.
Timasheff died in 1970 in Mount Vernon, New York.
Tolstaya, Alexandra Lvovna (1884 ‒1979), was the youngest daughter and secretary of the world famous Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. Although she shared her father’ doctrine of non-violence, she felt it was her duty to take part in the World War I. For her courage, the Russian government awarded her three St. George Medals and the rank of colonel. After the Revolution of 1917, she endured five arrests and a prison sentence for supporting the right of free speech and assembly. However, she was installed as the director of the Tolstoy estate-museum in Yasnaya Polyana in 1921. She was permitted to leave Soviet Russia in 1929 and settled in the United States in 1931. In 1939, Alexandra Tolstoy founded the Tolstoy Foundation. In 1941, a generous private donor made it possible for the Tolstoy Foundation to acquire Reed Farm, a 70-acre parcel of land 36 miles north of New York City. As Alexandra Tolstoy envisioned, the Farm became a haven and a resettlement center for over 30,000 refugees brought to the United States and directly sponsored by the Foundation. Here newly arrived refugees could develop psychological equilibrium, learn English and the skills necessary to start their new life in America. Her greatest concern was that new immigrants assimilate quickly and successfully into the mainstream of American life, without losing their cultural and spiritual identities. Alexandra Tolstoy was a consistent beacon of light to the aged, to the young, to the sick, to the distressed and to the forgotten at home and abroad. It was said that “no one came to her despondent without solace. No one came in despair without receiving encouragement.”
Turchaninov, Ivan Vasilyevich (1821‒1901) better known by his Americanized name of John Basil Turchin, was a Union Army brigadier general in the American Civil War. He is most noted for the “Rape of Athens,” a controversial incident in Athens, Alabama, in which he allowed his soldiers to terrorize the local civilian population. Born into a Don Cossack family in Russia he attended the Imperial Military School in St. Petersburg in 1851 and later served as a Colonel of Staff in the Russian Guards. He fought in Hungary and in the Crimean War. In 1856, he and his wife moved to the United States, where he eventually settled in Chicago and worked for the Illinois Central Railroad. Turchin joined the Union army at the outbreak of the war in 1861. His formal training in the Imperial Russian Army and his combat experience made him a valuable officer. He saw the war as a vehicle by which to put an end to Southern aristocracy and the institution of slavery. A man of conviction, he refused to be intimidated by commanding officers that were lenient toward rebels who facilitated the return of fugitive slaves to their masters. The involvement of local citizens in the rout at Athens and the humiliation suffered by the Union soldiers led to the sacking of the town which was quelled when Turchin brought up reinforcements and was later charged with “terrozing the populaton” Colonel Turchin was subsequently relieved of command and court-martialed. Turchin’ court proceedings received national attention and as Union casualties mounted, his actions and views on conciliatory policies were re-examined and public sympathy swayed in his favor. President Abraham Lincoln, an astute observer of public opinion, promoted Turchin to brigadier general even before the court-martial was finished and Turchin was given command of a new brigade. He distinguished himself during the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga, and in the Atlanta Campaign.
Timoshenko, Stephen P. (1878 –1972) – is reputed to be the father of modern engineering mechanics. He wrote many of the seminal works in the areas of engineering mechanics, elasticity, and strength of materials, many of which are still widely used today. Timoshenko was born in the village of Shpotivka in Poltava Gubernia (currently in the Ukraine and part of Russia at the time). He studied at the St. Petersburg Institute of the Railways, taught in the same institution, and at the Saint Petersburg Polytechnical Institute and the University of Göttingen. Later, as a professor at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, Timoshenko did pioneering work on buckling and published the first version of his famous “Strength of materials” textbook. Back in St. Petersburg he worked as a Professor in the Electrotechnical Instute and the St. Petersburg Institute of the Railways. During that time he developed the theory of elasticity and the theory of beam deflection, and continued to study buckling. In 1918 he returned to Kiev and assisted in establishing the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences – the oldest academy among the Soviet republics other than Russia. In 1920, Timoshenko emigrated to Yugoslavia, where he held a professorship at the Zagreb Polytechnic Institute. In 1922 Timoshenko moved to the United States where he worked for the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, becoming a professor at the University of Michigan where he created the first bachelor’s and doctoral programs in engineering mechanics. His textbooks have been published in 36 languages. From 1936 onward he was a professor at Stanford University. In addition to his textbooks, Timoshenko wrote two other books, “Engineering Education in Russia” and “As I Remember”, the latter an autobiography. In 1957 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) established a medal named after Stephen Timoshenko given annually for distinguished contributions in applied mechanics.
Zvorykin, Vladimir (1889-1982) – he was born in Murom, Russia. Studied at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology. During the First World War he was enlisted in the Russian Signal Corps, and then got a job for Russian Marconi, testing radio equipment that was being produced for the Russian Army. In 1918 or 1919 Zvorykin left Russia for the United States. He is well known as the engineer and inventor of television technology. He invented a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes. Zvorykin was instrumental in the practical development of television from the early thirties, including charge storage-type tubes, infrared image tubes and the electron microscope. Several biographers have called him the “true” inventor of television.