Andrey Avinoff

Dr. Andrey Avinoff (14 February 1884 - 16 July 1949) (sometimes referred to as Andrej Nikolajewitsch Avinoff or Andrei Avinoff), was a Russian entomologist. Avinoff was the Director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History for 20 years from 1926 to 1946. He established himself as one of the world's greatest butterfly collectors and is also well known for his paintings.

Avinoff was born in Tulchyn, Podolia Governorate, now Ukraine, to a wealthy Russian family with ties to nobility who served a diplomatic role in the Nicholas II of Russia's court. Avinoff learned to speak English fluently during his childhood. He left Russia after the Revolution and moved to America. In 1924, he was hired as an assistant curator of entomology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He was promoted to director in 1926, a position he held until 1946. He was also appointed a trustee of the museum.

In 1927 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Pittsburgh. His associates at the Carnegie Museum included William P. Comstock, E. Irving Huntington, Cyril F. dos Passos and Vladimir Nabokov.

Avinoff generally lived a secluded upper-class life in Pittsburgh, a popular and thriving metropolis with a strong elitist society at the time. A homosexual, Avinoff never had children. Later in life, suffering from health conditions, he moved to New York where he resumed his interest in painting, and the New Yorker profiled him in a 12-page article about his life. At his death, he had created hundreds of paintings which are largely sought after by collectors today.

Avinoff was close friends with the biologist and sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, largely due to their similar interest in insects from Kinsey's work with gall wasps.

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