Dr. Michael Cherniavsky, Ph.D. (History, University of California, 1951; M.A., 1947; B.A., 1946), was an instructor in history at Wesleyan University; previously, he was a research assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and joined the faculty of the University of Rochester as Associate Professor in 1964. In 1972, he was appointed Andrew W. Mellon Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. His field was Russian medieval history with a specialty in 15th and 16th century Russian political theory.