Top 12 Famous People of Chernihiv
Dmytro Samokvasov was born on May 12, 1843 in the village Stakhorshchyna in the Chernihiv region in a family of nobles, who came from the Cossack senior representative. He spent his youth in Novgorod-Siverskyi, studying in the local high school in 1853-1862. In 1863 Dmytro entered the Jurisprudence Faculty of St. Petersburg University and graduated in 1868 as a Candidate of Juridical Sciences. However, the specialization of the future professor became the historical science and the history of law. At the beginning of his career, he was different from his office colleagues, because of the longing for field research and archeology. He was particularly interested in the history and archeology of the (Northern) Severiane tribe, that is, the places where he was born and raised.
Being a talented researcher, he is invited to a post of associate professor at one of the best universities of the Russian Empire in Warsaw at that time. Due to his hard work, he became the dean of the Faculty of Law from 1887, and also temporarily serves as Rector of Warsaw University. Oddly enough, at that time Dmitry Samokvasov was the only dean to hold this post without being an ethnic Pole.
However, the greatest glory came to the professor after the excavation of Chernihiv mounds of Hulbyshche, Nameless (Bezimennyi) and the Black Tomb in the 1870s. The discovery caused real sensation, especially after the Paris World Exhibition. The British Museum even tried to buy the collection for its own exhibition. However, in 1891, Dmitry Samokvasov transferred the entire collection to the Russian Imperial History Museum, because there was no museum in Chernihiv. So the findings are still stored in Moscow to this day.
