Society and Culture in Saint Petersburg - Notable People

Notable People

Many important Russian and international figures, politicians, businessmen, artists, writers and scientists were born and/or have lived in Saint Petersburg. These include many of the Russian emperors; the historic figures Grigori Rasputin, Felix Yusupov, Aleksandr Menshikov, Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin, Aleksandr Suvorov, Mikhail Kutuzov, Eugene Botkin, Peter Carl Fabergé, and the Stroganovs; the writers Aleksandr Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolay Gogol, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Nikolai Leskov, Ayn Rand, Yevgeni Zamyatin, Vladimir Nabokov, Osip Mandelstam, Nikolai Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova, Ivan Efremov, and Joseph Brodsky; the composers Anton Rubinstein, Aleksandr Borodin, Mikhail Glinka, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Andrei Petrov; the painters Ilya Repin, Ivan Aivazovsky, Arkhip Kuindzhi, Ivan Shishkin, Ivan Kramskoy, Valentin Serov, Mikhail Vrubel, Aleksandr Benois, Kazimir Malevich, Leon Bakst, and Marc Chagall; the scientists Dmitri Mendeleev, Nikolay Semyonov, Pyotr Kapitsa, Yakov Frenkel, Zhores Alferov, Leonid Kantorovich, Mikhail Lomonosov, Ivan Pavlov, Ivan Sechenov, Heinrich Schliemann, Abram Ioffe, and Boris Piotrovsky; businessmen Alfred Nobel, Ludvig Nobel, Emanuel Nobel, Robert Nobel, Nikolai Putilov, and brothers Elisseeff; the cosmonauts Georgi Grechko and Sergei Krikalyov; the ballet dancers Vaslav Nijinsky, Marius Petipa, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Matilda Kshesinskaya, Agrippina Vaganova, George Balanchine, Galina Ulanova, Natalia Dudinskaya, Natalia Makarova, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Rudolf Nureyev; the entertainers Sergei Diaghilev, Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Fedor Shalyapin, Grigori Kozintsev, Nikolai Cherkasov, Boris Babochkin, Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Georgy Zhzhyonov, Georgy Tovstonogov, Kirill Lavrov, and Alisa Freindlikh, the conductors Eduard Napravnik, Aleksandr Gauk, Evgeny Mravinsky, Yuri Temirkanov, and Valery Gergiev; the mathematicians Sofia Kovalevskaya, Pafnuti Chebyshev, Leonhard Euler, and Grigori Perelman; and the politicians Vladimir Lenin, Piotr Stolypin, Aleksandr Kerensky, Sergey Kirov, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, Anatoly Sobchak, and Vladimir Putin.