Boris Nemtsov - Early Life

Early Life

Boris Nemtsov was born on 9 October 1959 in Sochi to Efim Davidovich Nemtsov and Dina Yakovlevna Eidman. His mother was Jewish. In his autobiography, Nemtsov recounts that his Russian Orthodox grandmother had him baptized as an infant, something Nemtsov, now a practicing Orthodox Christian, found out many years later. From 1976 to 1981 he studied physics at Gorky State University, and in 1985 received a Ph. D. in Physics and Mathematics, defending his dissertation at the age of 25. Until 1990 Boris Nemtsov worked as a senior scientist at the Gorky Radio-Physics Research Institute (Горьковский научно-иссследовательский радиофизический институт, НИРФИ).

In 1986, in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, Nemtsov organized a protest movement in his hometown, which effectively prevented the construction of a new nuclear power plant in the region.