Marina Joanna Timasheff (maiden name Gorbunoff) was born in Moscow, Russia on May 25, 1927, the daughter of Ivan Gorbunoff, a civil engineer of Mordovian descent, and Claudia Gorbunoff (maiden name Arekhova), a Terek Cossack and pharmacist’s assistant. After a childhood in Stalin’s Soviet Union, she and her mother fled the USSR in 1943. They spent two years migrating through Ukraine, Poland and Latvia, and ended the war in Marburg, Germany. From there, they came to the United States as refugees. Marina began studying chemistry at Marburg University in 1950, completed her undergraduate studies at Syracuse University, then earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Yale University in 1956.
While at Yale she met her future husband, Sergei Timasheff, who was there on a post-doctoral fellowship in biochemistry. Sergei’s family was originally from St. Petersburg, Russia and had fled at the time of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Before coming to the USA in 1938, the Timasheffs lived for about 15 years in a suburb of Paris, where Sergei was born in 1926. Marina and Sergei were married during Marina’s last year of studies at Yale. Upon completion of her studies in 1956, the couple settled in the Philadelphia area. In 1966, Sergei was offered a professorship at Brandeis University (where Marina worked as a research fellow until her retirement), and the couple moved to Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts. This remained Marina’s home until her death.
Marina and Sergei had one child, a daughter, also named Marina, born in 1963.
Marina Timasheff was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church throughout her life, and a woman of supremely powerful intellect. She spoke, read and wrote in Russian, German, French and English. She read voraciously on a great variety of topics, and was also informed on current political and societal events and trends worldwide, although her true loves were the fine and decorative arts, architecture, archeology and history. She and her husband travelled the world to study at first hand the monuments and legacies of great cultures, including Central and South America, China, India, Egypt, Morocco and throughout Europe. After the fall of the Soviet Union, they also travelled extensively in Russia.
France was especially beloved. On her inspiration, the family spent many summers in France, including a month in Aix-les-Bains in the Alps of French Savoie, and a second month in a different region of France each year, so that each could be studied in depth – Romanesque and gothic churches and cathedrals, medieval castles, renaissance and baroque palaces, as well as museums, Michelin-starred restaurants, and natural beauties of the region. Upon retirement in 1994, Marina and Sergei bought an apartment in Paris, where they spent half the year until 2012.
After Sergei’s death in 2019, Marina continued to live in Wellesley, and enjoyed spending time with her grandchildren, Nicholas and Sophia, who both attended college in the area. She died peacefully in her own home in the evening of March 2, 2024, with her granddaughter at her side.
Marina Timasheff is survived by her daughter, Marina, and her two grandchildren, Nicholas and Sophia.
Eternal be her memory!
Funeral Services in the Russian Orthodox Church of The Epiphany, 963 South St., Roslindale, on Monday March 4, 2024 at 7 PM. Interment will take place at Novo Diveevo Cemetery, Nanuet, New York on Wednesday March 6 at 1 PM