This is the first biography in English of an extraordinary polymath whose great genius was stifled and finally extinguished by the Soviet Union. "Pavel Florensky: A Quiet Genius" is the first biography in English of an extraordinary polymath whose genius was stifled and finally extinguished by the Soviet Union. Today Pavel Florensky is often referred to as the Russian da Vinci. Florensky was, at one and the same time, a supremely gifted philosopher, mathematician, physicist, inventor, engineer and theologian. He was also a poet and wrote studies of history, language and art. Although he taught philosophy for most of his working life, his interests were wide-ranging and profound and included the study of time and space, the theory of relativity, aspects of language, and the properties of materials and geology. His book "The Pillar and the Ground of Truth" is widely seen as a masterpiece of Russian Orthodox theology. Eminent Russian scholar Avril Pyman looks at Florensky's life, from his childhood as the son of a railroad engineer to his mysterious death, and provides a populist perspective on his achievements. "Pavel Florensky: A Quiet Genius" celebrates the life of this unjustly forgotten victim of the Soviet Union.

Author Biography

Avril Pyman is Reader Emerita in Russian Literature at the University of Durham, and a Fellow of the British Academy. She is an expert in Russian literature of the 'Silver Age' and has published a major biography of Aleksandr Blok (OUP, 2 volumes, 1979-80) and A History of Russian Symbolism (CUP, 1994), as well as many translations from Russian. Geoffrey Hosking is Emeritus Professor of Russian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Cologne and a Research Fellow at Columbia University's Russian Institute. He is the author of numerous books,