Short answers, pulled from the story.
Nabokov is best known for his 1955 novel Lolita, which ranked fourth on the Modern Library's list of the 100 best twentieth-century novels in 1998. His 1962 novel Pale Fire ranked 53rd on the same list, and his memoir Speak, Memory placed eighth on Random House's ranking of twentieth-century nonfiction works.
Nabokov joined the staff of Wellesley College in 1941 as resident lecturer in comparative literature and is remembered as the founder of its Russian department. From 1948 to 1959 he taught Russian and European literature at Cornell University, where his students included future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the novelist Thomas Pynchon.
Vera Nabokov served as his secretary, typist, editor, proofreader, translator, bibliographer, agent, business manager, legal counsel, chauffeur, research assistant, teaching assistant, and professorial understudy, by Nabokov's own account. She also stopped him from burning unfinished drafts of Lolita.
Nabokov published 18 scientific articles on lepidoptery and named 12 valid species and genera. He hypothesized that a group of butterflies called the Polyommatus blues crossed into the New World over the Bering Strait in five waves, a theory later supported by genetic research. The genus Nabokovia was named in his honor.
Nabokov was a self-described synesthete who associated specific colors with letters; in Speak, Memory he described the long a of English as having "the tint of weathered wood" and the French a as evoking "polished ebony." His wife Vera and son Dmitri shared the trait, with Dmitri's color associations being blends of his parents' hues. Nabokov wove synesthetic perception through many of his fictional characters.
Nabokov died of bronchitis on the 2nd of July 1977 in Montreux, Switzerland, and was buried at the Clarens cemetery there. He was working on a novel titled The Original of Laura at the time of his death. Despite his request that the incomplete manuscript be burned, Vera and Dmitri published it in 2009.