Born in Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan in 1944, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky graduated with honors from Leningrad State University in 1967, specializing in Arabic studies. Professor Piotrovsky went on to work at the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences from 1967 to 1991, where he obtained his doctorate in history. Following in the footsteps of his esteemed father, the eminent archaeologist Boris Borisovich Piotrovsky, Professor Piotrovsky was appointed director of the Hermitage Museum in 1992 by decree of the prime minister—a position he still holds today.