George Nikoladze

Giorgi Nikoladze (11 August 1888 – 22 September 1931) was a Georgian mathematician, metallurgist, translator, gymnast, and alpinist. He worked as a professor at Tbilisi State University and as a translator for technical language into Georgian. He was also a cofounder of the Georgian Mathematical Union, founder of the first Georgian gymnastic society Shevardeni, and led a summit to Mount Kazbegi.

Biography The son of writer Niko Nikoladze and biologist Olga Guramishvili-Nikoladze, and a member of the Nikoladze noble family, Giorgi Nikoladze was born on 11 August 1888 at in Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire. He first studied at the First Tbilisi Classical Gymnasium from 1898 to 1906, then the Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology until 1913, where he was granted a Diploma of Technological Engineer in Metallurgy. He then began working at the Tula Metallurgical Plant, later moving to the Donetsk Metallurgical Plant in the engineering department, and finally returning to Georgia in 1918.

From 1918 to 1928, he worked as a lecturer and then a professor at Tbilisi State University, and was awarded a doctorate from the at the University of Paris in 1928

Alongside Kharadze, Muskhelishvli, and Andrea Razmadze, he founded the Georgian Mathematical Union in 1923. Nikoladze also had a long-time interest in alpinism since his childhood, and in August that same year, he successfully led an expedition to the summit of the 5000-meter high Mount Kazbegi. He was married to Georgetta Gambashidze. He died on 22 September 1931 in Tbilisi.

In 2016, Georgian historian Paata Natsvlishvili hypothesized that Nikoladze was actually the "unknown French boy" who won gold at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris. According to Natsvlishvili, Nikoladze's sister had told him in an interview in the 1980s that her brother had won a boat race in France, and that the family had been touring Europe at the time of the Olympics. However, some historians from the International Society of Olympic Historians remained unconvinced that Nikoladze was really the unknown boy owing to the circumstantial evidence. Historian Bill Mallon said that the unknown boy only looked "a little" like Nikoladze.