Dmitry Zimin in Science and Business

Dmitry Borisovich Zimin was born April 28, 1933, in Moscow.

His father, Boris Nikolaevich Zimin, a research fellow at Bauman Moscow State Technical University, became a victim of the Stalinist purges in 1935. His mother worked as a typist. Zimin's ancestors were accomplished men. They designed and constructed the Moscow water supply system and founded the silk manufactories in the Moscow suburbs of Drezna and Orekhovo-Zuevo. In the early years of the twentieth century, one of them (Sergei Zimin) founded a private opera house.

Dmitry Zimin graduated from the radio-engineering department of the Moscow Aviation Institute in 1957. In 1963, he defended his kandidat dissertation; in 1984, he defended his doctoral dissertation. Zimin is an academician of the International Communications Academy, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Engineering Sciences, and a member of the presidium of the Russian Academy of Business and Entrepreneurship.

Zimin is an author and inventor with more than one hundred academic publications and patents to his credit. He is a laureate of the USSR Academy of Sciences Popov Prize (1965) and the Russian Federation State Prize (1993).

For more than thirty-five years, Zimin held leadership positions at the Mintz Radio Technical Institute (RTI). Zimin worked as a lab head; supervisor of the research section; director of the radio equipment development center; and deputy chief constructor of a large land-based radar station that was part of the anti-missile defense system.

In the early nineties, Zimin and a group of RTI engineers formed the company KB Impuls, which designed and manufactured radio equipment for civilian use.

In 1992, Zimin founded the mobile telecommunications company Vimpelkom, Ltd. (the Beeline cell phone network). Under Zimin's direction, Vimpelkom made a huge contribution to the mobile communications market in Russia. Within a few years, it had become one of this market's leading companies.

In 1996, Vimpelkom, which by that time had already become a joint-stock company, became the first Russian firm in post-Soviet history to trade its shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

Vimpelkom was recognized by western investors as the first Russian company to meet international standards of transparency, corporate governance, and investor protection.

As the general director and president of Vimpelkom, Dmitry Zimin served for many years on the board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. In 2001, Zimin was awarded a Business Reputation medal by the Business Olympus National Prize.

In May 2001, Zimin resigned his post as Vimpelkom's general director. The company's board of directors gave him the title President Emeritus and Founder of Vimpelkom.

After his resignation, Zimin immediately founded the non-profit Dynasty Foundation, whose mission is to support fundamental science and education in Russia, as well as to popularize science with the general public.