Short answers, pulled from the story.
Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzeff entered the world in 1870 as the son of a Latin teacher. This family background shaped his early intellectual environment before he ever stepped into a university lecture hall.
The Russian Revolution of 1918 forced Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzeff to leave his homeland forever. He emigrated first to Sweden and then moved on to England before arriving in the United States in 1920.
At Yale University, Rostovtzeff oversaw all archaeological activities of the institution and directed the excavations of Dura-Europos with particular intensity and focus. These digs became central to his reputation as an authority on caravan cities.
Rostovtzeff expounded his notable theories on Roman Empire collapse in The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire published in 1926. He attributed the fall of Rome to an alliance between the rural proletariat and the military in the third century A.D.
Glen Bowersock described Rostovtzeff's views as having been largely formed by the age of thirty. He developed mainly only in the quality of execution in later life while maintaining nineteenth-century historical perspectives into the twentieth century.