Dmitri Nabokov - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Dmitri Nabokov was born on May 10, 1934, in Berlin. He was the only child of Vladimir and Véra Slonim Nabokov. Due to Nazi Germany's growing political and social repression and the likelihood that the regime might target the family (Nabokov's mother was Jewish), the family fled to Paris in 1937, and emigrated to New York City in 1940. Subsequently, Nabokov was raised in the Boston area during the years that his father both taught at Wellesley College and served as curator of lepidoptery at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. When his father took a teaching job at Cornell University, Dmitri lived in Ithaca.

In 1951, Nabokov entered Harvard College, where he was a resident of Lowell House. Nabokov studied History and Literature. Although he scored high on the LSAT and was accepted to Harvard Law School (while still an undergraduate), Nabokov declined admission because he was searching for a vocation. Nabokov graduated cum laude in 1955. He studied singing (bass) for two years at the Longy School of Music. Nabokov then joined the U.S. Army as an instructor in military Russian and as an assistant to a chaplain.