George Vernadsky Papers, circa 1500-1973, bulk circa 1918-1973

George Vernadsky (Georgii Vladimirovich Vernadskii, 1887-1973) was a professor of Russian history at Yale University and one of the creators of the Eurasian Theory of Russian history.

Georgii Vladimirovich Vernadskii was born on August 20, 1887 in St. Petersburg. His parents were Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadskii and Nataliia E. Vernadskaia, née Staritskaia. He had one sister, Nina, who was born in 1898.

George Vernadsky married his second cousin, Nina Vladimirovna Ilfinskaia (1884-1971), in 1908. They were to have no children. He graduated in history from Moscow University in 1910. He received a master's degree in history (equivalent to the American Ph.D.) from Petrograd University in 1917; his dissertation was, "Russkoe masonstvo v tsarstvovanii Ekateriny II." He was a private-docent at Petrograd University in 1913-17, a professor at Perm' University in 1917-18, and then at Tauride University in Simferopol' in 1918-1920. He took little part in politics as a young man, but was a member of the liberal Kadet Party in 1906-1908 and 1917. In 1920 he was briefly head of the Press Department (Otdel Pechati) in General Wrangel's Crimean government. Through most of his life, however, he seems to have been a relentlessly non-political man.

George and Nina Vernadsky left the Crimea at the time of the evacuation of Wrangel's army in November 1920. They spent several months in Istanbul, and 1921-1922 in Athens. In 1922 they went to Prague, where he was a member of the Russkaia Uchebnaia Kollegiia and a professor at the Russkii Iuridicheskii Fakul'tet. He stayed there until 1927. While in Prague, he was a founding member of the Kondakov Institute. He also became intellectually and personally close with members of the Eurasianist movement, especially Petr Savitskii.

The Vernadskys came to the United States in 1927, on the invitation of Yale University. George remained at Yale for the rest of his career, as a research associate until 1946 and then as a professor until 1956, when he retired. In this period he was also at times a guest lecturer and professor at Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and Western Reserve.

George Vernadsky's major field of research and teaching was medieval and early modern Russian history, but he also made significant contributions in the Asian and Byzantine areas. His best known works were his one-volume A History of Russia, which went through 5 editions, and five volumes of a projected 10-volume history of Russia. Among his long-term professional associations were the Kondakov Institute, the Medieval Academy of America, the American Historical Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.

Nina Vernadsky died on October 18, 1971. George died two years later, on June 12, 1973.

In order to distinguish between George Vernadsky's sister, Nina Vladimirovna Vernadskaia Toll', and his wife, Nina Vladimirovna Ilfinskaia Vernadskaia, this finding aid refers to George Vernadsky's wife by her Anglicized name, Nina Vernadsky.

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadskii (1863-1945) was a Russian geologist, the first head of the Soviet Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and recipient of the 1943 Stalin Prize.

Vladimir I. Vernadskii was born on 28 February 1863 in St. Petersburg; his father, Ivan V. Vernadskii (1821-1884), was a professor of economics. Vladimir Vernadskii graduated from St. Petersburg University in 1885. He defended his master's dissertation in l891 and his doctorate (the European habilitation) 6 years later. In 1890 he became a private-docent at Moscow University, and in 1898 a professor; he remained in that position until 1911, when he and many other professors lost their posts for political reasons. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg from 1906, a founder of the liberal Kadet Party, and also served on the State Council (Gosudarstvennyi Sovet).

Vernadskii's main fields were mineralogy and crystallography, but his particular specialization has been described as biogeochemistry. His was a remarkable career, in that he was a distinguished scholar in both Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, and well thought of also in the West. Vernadskii became the first head of the Soviet Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He stayed in Western Europe through the mid-1920s, but then elected to return to the Soviet Union, where he and his wife, Nataliia, remained except for several trips to the West. He kept up regular contact with his children, George Vernadsky and Nina Toll', both of whom emigrated to Europe and, eventually, to the United States. He received the Stalin Prize in 1943.

Vernadskii died on 6 January 1945, two years after his wife. Some of his works have appeared in English and French as well as in Russian, and selections of his writings were published posthumously in the USSR.