DEATH OF ARMENAG SHAHMOURADIAN

Armenag Shahmouradian had huge success in Paris as opera singer, but he became more famous as one of the most conspicuous representatives of the musical school founded by Gomidas Vartabed.

He was born on April 7, 1878, in Mush (Western Armenia). His singing talents as a member of the church choir, which he joined at the age of eight, attracted the attention of Bishop Nerses Kharakhanian. The bishop took him under his wing and sent him to the Seminary of the monastery of St. Garabed in Mush to get his education, but the narrow confines of the monastery were not suited for the young boy, who returned home quite soon.

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BIRTH OF ARCHBISHOP KHOREN KALFAYAN

Archbishop Khoren Kalfayan, also know by the literary surname of Nar Bey, was a well-known literary and public figure in the second half of the nineteenth century.

He was born in Constantinople on September 6, 1831. Along with his brother Ambrosius Kalfayan, he was sent to the convent of St. Lazarus of the Mekhitarist Congregation of Venice, where he received his education.

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BIRTH OF TATEVIK SAZANDARIAN

Tatevik Sazandarian was an operatic mezzo–soprano who became a well-known soloist at the Yerevan Opera Theater and then a longtime teacher at the Komitas Conservatory.

She was born in Khndzoresk, in Siunik, on August 20, 1916. She grew up in Baku, where she sang as a soloist in the school choir from the age of ten. She moved to Moscow in 1932 and sang in several amateur performances. She began performing in concerts in 1933 and studied at the musical and drama studios of the Armenian Cultural House of Moscow…

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DEATH OF BELLA (TARPINIAN) DARBINYAN

Between the 1960s and 1980s, Bella Darbinian was at her peak as one of the most well-known singers of Armenia, with her fame firmly established in the Diaspora.

Bella Darbinian was born on February 10, 1936, in Kirovakan (nowadays Vanadzor). Her actual last name was Kuznetsova (her father was Russian and her mother Armenian). When she started her musical career, she considered more appropriate to use an Armenian name and used the straightforward translation of her surname (Russian kuznets = Armenian darbin-tarpin “blacksmith”).

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BIRTH OF MANOUG PARIKIAN

Manoug Parikian was an accomplished British Armenian violinist and violin teacher of international fame.

Parikian was born on September 15, 1920, in Mersin (Cilicia), to parents from Adana. He lived in Cyprus, where he took his first violin lessons from his paternal uncle Vahan Bedelian, a well-known musician and teacher. He moved to London in 1936, where he studied with Louis Pecsaki at the Trinity College of Music (1936-1939).

He made his debut as a concerto soloist in 1947 in Liverpool and in 1949 at the Royal Albert Hall, London. He was concert master of several orchestras: the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (1947-1948), London Philharmonia Orchestra (1949-1957), The English Opera Group Orchestra (1949-1951),

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DEATH OF CYRUS HAMLIN

Cyrus Hamlin was a prominent American Congregational missionary and co-founder of Robert College in Constantinople.

Hamlin was born in Waterford, Maine, on January 8, 1811. He belonged to a prominent nineteenth-century family in the state. At sixteen, he entered an apprenticeship as a silversmith and jeweler in Portland, Maine, before deciding to enter the ministry. He first attended Bridgton Academy before heading to college. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1834 and from Bangor Theological Seminary in 1837.

Hamlin married Henrietta Jackson in 1838 and they left the United States in the same year for the Ottoman Empire as a missionary under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. He helped found Bebek Seminary in 1840 as part of his outreach to Armenians and directed it until 1860.

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BIRTH OF PAUL GARABEDIAN

Paul Garabedian was an Armenian American mathematician whose computer computations helped lead to fuel–efficient wings for modern jetliners.

He was born in Cincinnati on August 2, 1927. He was home-schooled by his parents, who both held Harvard graduate degrees. Harvard rejected him when he applied for college in 1943, and he attended Brown University instead. After graduation (1946), he went to Harvard for his master’s (1947) and doctoral studies and completed his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1948 at the age of 21.

After working for seven years at the University of California, Berkeley (1949-1956), and three years at Stanford University (1956-1959), Garabedian joined New York University and remained there for the next 51 years in the division of computational fluid dynamics of the university’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, becoming its director in 1978. He supervised 27 dissertations from 1953 to 1997. He married and had two daughters.

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DEATH OF EDUARD DANIELIAN

A prolific historian, Eduard Danielian had an important contribution to the study of Armenian ancient and medieval history.

Danielian was born on February 18, 1944, in Yerevan. He graduated from the Faculty of Geography of Yerevan State University (1961-1966) and the English section of the Institute (now University) of Foreign Languages Valery Briusov (1966-1972). After finishing the course at the Ph.D. program of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences, in 1972 he defended his dissertation on “The Reflection of Ancient Cosmological Views in Anania Shirakatsi’s Cosmology and Atlas.” He earned a second doctorate in 1988 with the subject “Armeno-Byzantine Political Relations in the Twilight of Sassanid Persia and the Early Period of the Arab Caliphate.”

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DEATH OF STEPANOS MALKHASIANTS

Along with Hrachia Ajarian and Manuk Abeghian, Stepanos Malkhasiants was a key name in Armenian philology of the first half of the twentieth century.

He was born in Akhaltskha (Akhaltsikh), Javakhk, nowadays in Georgia, on November 7, 1859. He received his primary education at the Karapetian parochial school in Akhaltskha and then the local Russian gymnasium. From 1874 to 1878 he attended the Gevorgian Seminary in Vagharshapat. Malkhasiants was later admitted to the department of Oriental Studies at St. Petersburg State University and graduated in 1889 with an emphasis in Armenian, Sanskrit, and Georgian Studies and a first doctorate in philology.

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DEATH OF HEINRICH GELZER

German historian and philologist Heinrich Gelzer’s wide interest in ancient history led him to learn Armenian and deal with the intricacies of Armenian ancient history.

He was the son of well-known Swiss historian Johann Heinrich Gelzer (1813-1889). He was born on July 1, 1847, in Berlin. He taught classical philology and ancient history at the Basel Institute and the universities of Heidelberg and Jena, where he became professor in 1878.

He studied the works of various ancient historians (Sextus Julius Africanus, Eusebius of Caesarea, George of Cyprus, and others), as well as the history of Byzantium. His main works of Armenian Studies were translated into Armenian: Pavstos Buzand and the Beginnings of the Armenian Church (1896),…

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