Nikolay Borodin

Nikolai Andreyevich Borodin (; also Nicholas A. Borodin; 23 November 1861 – 22 December 1937) was a Russian ichthyologist, politician, and journalist. He served as a deputy of the representing the Ural Oblast, was a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party, and later became a professor at Harvard University.

Biography Borodin was born into the family of a centurion (later a yesaul) of the Ural Cossack Host.

In 1870 he entered the Ural Military Gymnasium, graduating with a gold medal in 1879. He was admitted to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Saint Petersburg University, first studying mathematics (1879–1880) and later switching to natural sciences (from September 1880). He graduated from the natural sciences department in December 1884. He founded and edited the newspapers Uralets, Ural Review, and Cossack Herald (1901–1904). He also worked for Our Life, contributed to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, and edited sections on fisheries in several technical journals.

Political activity As a student Borodin joined the social-democratic group of D. Blagoyev in 1883 and was briefly arrested in 1886 for revolutionary activities. Later, he founded educational and social organizations in Uralsk.

In the State Duma On 22 April 1906 he was elected to the First State Duma of the Russian Empire as a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party. He signed the Vyborg Manifesto and was sentenced to three months in prison, losing his right to stand for election.

Later years and emigration After the Russian Revolution of 1917 Borodin emigrated to the United States in 1919, teaching at the Russian People's University in New York. From 1928 he served as curator of ichthyology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, becoming a professor in 1931.

Personal life He married Lidia Semyonovna Donskova (born 1860s), who was a mathematician and librarian. They had a son and a daughter. Dmitry Borodin (1887–1957) was entomologist. Tatyana Borodina (1898–1937) was architect and was executed in Leningrad during the Great Purge.

He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1937.

Species described Clupeonella tscharchalensis Borodin, 1896 Acipenser persicus Borodin, 1897 Clupeonella engrauliformis Borodin, 1904 Alosa braschnikowi Borodin, 1904 Cirripectes obscurus Borodin, 1927 Chasmocranus truncatorostris Borodin, 1927 Trachelyopterus leopardinus Borodin, 1927 Lestidium atlanticum Borodin, 1928 Hypomasticus garmani Borodin, 1929 Synodontis tanganyicae Borodin, 1936

Selected works Statistical Atlas of the Ural Cossack Host. Uralsk, 1885. Fisheries in Western Europe and North America. St. Petersburg, 1898–1900. The Caspian Herring and Its Fisheries. St. Petersburg, 1908. The Ural Cossacks and Their Fisheries. N.Y., Appleton & Co. Ideals and Reality: Forty Years of the Life and Work of an Ordinary Russian Intellectual (1879–1919). Berlin–Paris, 1930.