Curated category
Saint Petersburg State University alumni
- Nikolai GogolNikolai Vasilyevich Gogol once described a planned masterpiece as a Russian answer to Dante's Divine Comedy. He never finished it.
- Vladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, the man the world would come to know as Vladimir Lenin, took the name from no person at all. He first used it in December 1901, and…
- Vladimir PutinVladimir Putin was born on the 7th of October 1952 in Leningrad, a city shaped by some of the most catastrophic violence of the 20th century.
- George GamowGeorgiy Antonovich Gamow was born in Odessa, Russian Empire, now Odesa, Ukraine. His father taught Russian language and literature while his mother taught…
- Dmitry MedvedevDmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev was born on the 14th of September 1965 in Leningrad, in what was then the Soviet Union. He grew up in a 40-square-metre…
- Grigori PerelmanGrigori Perelman was offered one million dollars, and he said no. He was offered the highest honor in mathematics, the Fields Medal, and he said no to that…
- Dmitri MendeleevDmitri Mendeleev claimed he saw the answer in a dream. "I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required," he recalled.
- Lev LandauLev Davidovich Landau was born on the 22nd of January 1908, in Baku, then part of the Russian Empire, and before he was old enough to attend university he…
- Ivan PavlovIvan Petrovich Pavlov was born on the 26th of September 1849 in Ryazan, a city in the Russian Empire, the eldest of ten children born to a village Orthodox…
- Alexander ProkhorovAlexander Prokhorov was born on the 11th of July 1916 in Atherton, Australia, the child of Russian parents who had fled Tsarist repression on the other side…
- Michael RostovtzeffMichael Rostovtzeff arrived in the United States in 1920, a refugee from a revolution he would spend the rest of his life trying to understand.
- Oleg KaluginOleg Danilovich Kalugin was born on the 6th of September 1934 in Leningrad. His father served as an officer within the NKVD, the predecessor to the KGB.
- Dmitry MerezhkovskyDmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times and never won it. He co-founded Russian Symbolism, helped invent…