Ihor Ševčenko
The news of Ihor Ševčenko’s death, on the day after Christmas 2009, elicited a spontaneous international reaction that befitted his stature as a towering intellect and hugely admired scholar in the fields of Byzantine and pre-modern Slavic studies. Within a few weeks of his passing, the family website had received messages of condolence and recollections from more than eighty colleagues, former students, and research assistants, written in seven different languages. These remembrances paint a picture of a figure larger than life in every sense, standing over six feet tall and commanding huge vistas of learning; an inspiring teacher dedicated to excellence; and a man of infinite curiosity, profound humanity, deep generosity, boundless wit, and tremendous charm. He could also be intimidating—a colleague once felt compelled to tell him to his face that he was suffering from a superiority complex. True to character, he took the remark in good part. His...