The
self-taught inventor Ivan Kulibin has a special place
in any list of famous people from the province.
He earned fame as an unusually talented watchmaker. When he was just 15, he amazed many by fixing
the complicated mechanism of the clock in the Stroganovskaya
church. He went on to make pocket
watches which not only told the time but also played tunes and showed a short
puppet show. When Catherine the Great
travelled down the Volga, he demonstrated to her his array of scientific
instruments, including telescopes and microscopes. Many of his other inventions are also famous:
the single-arch bridge, smokeless fireworks, new lamp technology which
increased its brightness 500 times, and a self-propelled boat.
In
1818, the great folklorist Mel’nikov-Pechersky was
born in Nizhny Novgorod. His novels and stories captured the rich folk
heritage of the region and conveyed it to the rest of the world. The great Russian
mathematician and scientist Lobachesky and poet Dobrolyubov were also born in the city.
From
1863 to 1869, the father of Lenin, Il’ya Nikolaevich Ulyanov, worked in
the city. Lenin’s older siblings, Anna
and Alexander, were born there. Lenin
himself was a frequent visitor to the city.
The
famous Popov, the inventor of the radio, was also
connected to Nizhny Novgorod. From 1889 to 1898 he was in charge of the
Trade Fair’s power station.
Perhaps
the most famous child of Nizhny Novgorod was Maksim
Gor’ky, after whom the city was renamed in 1932. Daily life and happenings in the city are
reflected in his work. There he created
the legend of the folk-hero Danko, wrote “Song of Sokol” and “Song of the Stormy Petrel”, and wrote many
stories and books. He took an active
part in the revolution in Nizhny Novgorod. Despite imprisoning him twice the local
police were unable to stop his revolutionary activities, complaining
to their superiors that “all revolutionary activity in Nizhny,
is a result solely of Gor’ky’s activities.” When he was expelled from Nizhny Novgorod in 1901 under suspicion
of acquiring a printing press for the Sormovsky
Social Democrats, his supporters conducted the first political demonstration in
the history of the city.
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