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15 Facts About Mary Zirin

1.

Mary Zirin was an American scholar of Russian literature and an advocate for Slavic women's studies, who is remembered for her translations of Russian manuscripts and compilations of bibliographies of Slavic women.

2.

The Mary Zirin Prize, created in her honor in 1999, is an annual award given by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies to promote independent scholarship.

3.

Mary Zirin Noble Fleming was born on September 4,1932, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Mary Zirin and Roscoe Bain Fleming.

4.

Mary Zirin's mother, who attended Indiana University, was a high school teacher.

5.

Mary Zirin's father was an award-winning newspaper columnist who wrote for The Baltimore Sun, The Christian Science Monitor, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, and The Denver Post, among others.

6.

Mary Zirin returned to the United States and began working at the High Altitude Observatory in Boulder, where she met Harold Zirin, an astronomer employed at the facility.

7.

Mary Zirin completed her dissertation, Prisvin and the Chain of Kascej in 1971, earning a Ph.

8.

From 1969 to 1973, Mary Zirin lectured in Russian language at the California Institute of Technology.

9.

Mary Zirin lectured at Occidental College in Los Angeles, before becoming an independent scholar and freelance translator.

10.

Mary Zirin wrote and edited entries on writers who preceded 1885, Rosenthal handled authors active between 1885 and 1925, and Ledkovsky worked on the authors writing after 1925.

11.

From 1980, Mary Zirin participated in the summer research lab hosted by the Russian and East European Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

12.

Mary Zirin called the work "indispensable" for scholars, but noted that it probably was not as beneficial to general readers or students.

13.

At the time of her death on February 4,2019, Mary Zirin was living in Pasadena, California.

14.

Mary Zirin had established a scholarship fund for the Slavic Reference Service of the University of Illinois, and with her husband endowed a chair in pulmonary biology in Colorado at National Jewish Health in 2005.

15.

The Mary Zirin Prize, created in her honor in 1990, is an annual award given by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies to promote independent scholarship.