Heritage
Five family stories. An artist, a literary scholar, an education administrator, a mathematician and a botanist: different work and different lives.
I want to preserve more than names: a drawing on paper, a book on decoration, a literary study, a mathematical paper. Their work lets us encounter each person directly.
Andrey Podryabinnikov
My father. Papers on primary chains of modules and permutation groups.
Trifon Podryabinnikov
My great-grandfather. Porcelain and faience artist; 1932 designs and a book on salt-solution painting.
Otto (Otton) Bem
My great-grandfather and Alfred's brother. Education work and records of political repression.
Alfred Bem
My great-grandfather's cousin. Dostoevsky scholar, critic and teacher in Prague.
Alfred Alekseyevich Kolakovsky
1906–1997
My great-grandfather’s cousin. A botanist and palaeobotanist who studied the plant life of the Caucasus and Abkhazia.