Shimkin, Demetri Boris (1916-1992) | Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The son-in-law of Sarah Gofseyeff Heller, Demetri Boris Shimkin was born in Omsk, Siberia on July 4, 1916 to Boris Michael and Lydia Shimkin and left Russia with his immediate family following the Russian Revolution. After settling in Indonesia and Holland, the Shimkins relocated to the United States, where Demetri graduated with bachelor's and doctoral degrees in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley in the 1930s.

Demetri's father Boris was affiliated with the engineering program at the University of California and involved in bridge and railroad construction (he had been active in the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad before the family's immigration). Demetri's brother Michael Boris Shimkin played an important role in American cancer research, establishing the National Cancer Institute's Laboratory for Experimental Oncology and working at the University of California at San Diego.

Demetri Shimkin served with military intelligence during World War II and became a faculty member at the University of Illinois in 1960. He first married Edith Manning, and his son Alexander died as a journalist in Vietnam after volunteering for the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. He remarried Tauby Heller and died in Urbana, Illinois in 1992.

"Demetri Shimkin, 76, An Anthropologist." New York Times, December 25, 1992.

"Michael Boris Shimkin Papers." Mandeville Special Collections Library. University of California at San Diego.