46.4775° N, 30.7326° E

ODESSA

Most Famous People Born in Odessa, Ukraine

Notable people
883
Peak decade
1900s
Median birth year
1919
Most distinctive
Violin 24.0×

Catherine the Great's Black Sea port was the most literary and musical city of the late Russian Empire, and the panel still shows it cold. A Violin bench running twenty-four times the global baseline is basically the Stolyarsky school that produced half the twentieth-century Soviet string section, with Pianist, Conductor and Mathematician lines stacking underneath and a Chess cluster at better than twelve times the norm — Isaac Babel's Moldavanka made legible as data, right up until the pogroms and the Civil War scattered it across three continents.

Through the Decades

One face per decade — the most globally famous figure born in Odessa during each.

Notable Births by Decade

Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1900s with 98 notable births.

What Odessa Is Known For

Click any row to filter the list of people below.

Football is Odessa's biggest profession — 13% of all notables (114).

Odessa over-indexes on violin24.0× the global rate.

Odessa under-produces politician — only 0.3× the global rate.

  1. Football114
  2. Actor43
  3. Writer37
  4. Painter37
  5. Politician32
  6. Skater30
  7. Mathematician24
  8. Chess23
  1. Violin1524.0×
  2. Skater3014.1×
  3. Chess2312.8×
  4. Dancer1010.6×
  5. Pianist229.3×
  6. Mathematician245.4×
  7. Conductor104.4×
  8. Economist102.7×
  1. Politician320.3×

Profession Mix Over Time

Each band shows a profession family's share of Odessa's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.

180018251850187519001925195019752000
  • Sports
  • Science
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Film & TV
  • Art & Design
  • Other
All883
Sort By

Showing 98 of 883 notable people

0003 ASTROPHYSICIST

George Gamow

1904 - 1968

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0006 CONDUCTOR

David Oistrakh

1908 - 1974

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0010 ENGINEER

Valentin Glushko

1908 - 1989

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0013 VIOLIN

Nathan Milstein

1902 - 1992

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0014 WRITER

Yevgeny Petrov (writer)

1902 - 1942

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0025 JOURNALIST

Leone Ginzburg

1909 - 1944

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0029 ECONOMIST

Alexander Gerschenkron

1904 - 1978

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0031 PHOTOGRAPHER

Roman Karmen

1906 - 1978

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0033 PIANIST

Shura Cherkassky

1909 - 1995

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0043 FILM

Mark Donskoy

1901 - 1981

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0045 FILM

Leonid Trauberg

1902 - 1990

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0049 POET

Semyon Kirsanov

1906 - 1972

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0065 ARCHITECT

Morris Lapidus

1902 - 2001

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0085 WRITER

Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya

1908 - 1994

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0090 WRITER

Harry Grey

1901 - 1980

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0091 PIANIST

Maria Grinberg

1908 - 1978

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0103 MATHEMATICIAN

Adolph P. Yushkevich

1906 - 1993

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0109 POLITICIAN

Genrikh Lyushkov

1900 - 1945

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0119 MATHEMATICIAN

Mark Naimark

1909 - 1978

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0125 COMPOSER

Nicholas Brodszky

1905 - 1958

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0130 REVOLUTIONARY

Yakov Blumkin

1900 - 1929

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0133 MILITANT

Avraham Tehomi

1903 - 1990

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0135 VIOLIN

Tossy Spivakovsky

1906 - 1998

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0140 COMPOSER

Antonio Spadavecchia

1907 - 1988

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0144 ACTOR

Leon Belasco

1902 - 1988

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0160 ART DIRECTOR

Georges Wakhévitch

1907 - 1984

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0161 WRITER

Lidiya Ginzburg

1902 - 1990

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0165 JOURNALIST

Eugène Aisberg

1905 - 1980

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0167 MATHEMATICIAN

Felix Gantmacher

1908 - 1964

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0176 ADMIRAL

Nikolay Lunin

1907 - 1970

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0187 GANGSTER

David Berman (mobster)

1903 - 1957

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0198 WRITER

Alexandre Marc

1904 - 2000

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0208 CHESS

Vitaly Halberstadt

1903 - 1967

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0212 ACTOR

Adolf Fischer (actor)

1900 - 1984

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0213 ARCHITECT

Dov Karmi

1905 - 1962

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0216 DANCER

Pavlo Virsky

1905 - 1975

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0226 FILM

Ilya Trauberg

1905 - 1948

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0228 PAINTER

Friedrich Jürgenson

1903 - 1987

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0246 MATHEMATICIAN

Boris Levin

1906 - 1993

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0247 PAINTER

Avigdor Stematsky

1908 - 1989

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0252 POET

Yurii Lypa

1900 - 1944

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0263 ACTOR

Minerva Pious

1903 - 1979

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0274 ANALYST

Bill Weisband

1908 - 1967

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0278 COMPOSER

Mikhail Raukhverger

1901 - 1989

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0309 WRITER

Sergei Varshavsky

1906 - 1980

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0315 MATHEMATICIAN

Wladimir Seidel

1907 - 1981

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0316 WRITER

Halina Auderska

1904 - 2000

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0319 HOCKEY

Johnny Gottselig

1906 - 1986

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0324 MUSIC

Lev Barenboim

1906 - 1985

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0331 CONDUCTOR

Konstantin Listov

1900 - 1983

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0333 CONDUCTOR

Kostiantyn Dankevych

1905 - 1984

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0342 OPERA

Arnold Azrikan

1906 - 1976

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0374 CHESS

Israel Schiffmann

1903 - 1930

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0376 FILM

Mikhail Karyukov

1905 - 1992

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0378 COMPOSER

Joseph Kaminski

1903 - 1972

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0401 ACTOR

Viktor Dobrovolsky

1906 - 1984

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0403 POLITICIAN

Haim Ben-Asher

1904 - 1998

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0411 ASTRONOMER

Zinaida Aksentyeva

1900 - 1969

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0429 ARCHITECT

Michail Adolfowitsch Minkus

1905 - 1963

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0438 POLITICIAN

Lisa Ullrich

1900 - 1986

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0440 PIANIST

Kostia Konstantinoff

1903 - 1947

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0487 CHEMIST

Anton Wassiljewitsch Ablow

1905 - 1978

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0493 VIOLIN

Edgar Ortenberg

1900 - 1996

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0499 COLLECTOR

Edith Halpert

1900 - 1970

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0512 WRITER

Nina Gourfinkel

1900 - 1984

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0517 WRITER

Grigorii Grebnev

1902 - 1960

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0519 BALLET

Boris Lisanevich

1905 - 1985

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0522 MILITAR

Mikhail Tikhonov

1900 - 1971

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0547 POLITICIAN

Aryeh Bahir

1906 - 1970

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0557 COMPOSER

Boris Semjonowitsch Schechter

1900 - 1961

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0559 MATHEMATICIAN

Dmitri Abramowitsch Raikow

1905 - 1980

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0598 ACTIVIST

Alexander Haim Pekelis

1902 - 1946

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0609 SINGER

Arkady Pogodin

1901 - 1975

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0612 ACTOR

Valentina Tokarskaya

1906 - 1996

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0633 PAINTER

Vladimir Gorb

1903 - 1988

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0645 ACTOR

Vera Voronina

Born 1905

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0654 FEMME DE

Serafima Souok

1902 - 1983

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0667 JOURNALIST

Juliette Pary

1903 - 1950

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0675 FOOTBALL

Nikolai Trusevich

1909 - 1943

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0689 COMPOSER

Gregory Stone (Komponist)

1900 - 1991

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0701 CINEMA

Georges C. Stilly

1904 - 1993

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0703 PSYCHIATRIST

Lewis Wolberg

1905 - 1988

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0707 ACTOR

Fatma Gadri

1907 - 1968

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0709 ACTOR

Ernst Konstantin

1908 - 1969

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0727 PHYSICIAN

Ruth Eissler-Selke

1906 - 1989

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0729 OFFICER

Jan Górski

1905 - 1945

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0738 WRITER

Germán Ziclis

1903 - 1977

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0774 ECONOMIST

Albert Masnata

1900 - 1983

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0775 BASEBALL

Izzy Goldstein

1908 - 1993

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0792 PIANIST

Alec Siniavine

1906 - 1966

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0811 POLITICIAN

David Kurtzman

1903 - 1977

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0831 SURGEON

Natalio Berman

1908 - 1957

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0843 MISSING

Jenny Jaeger

1909 - 1986

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0855 FIGHTER

Claude Servet

1904 - 1944

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0870 JOURNALIST

Luis Koiffmann

1900 - 1979

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0872 MILITANT

Thérèse Chassaing

1908 - 1975

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0877 AEROSPACE

Aleksandr Maly

1907 - 1961

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0881 SECRETARY

Boris Shishkin

1908 - 1984

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