which apparently have been taken seriously." Ĭopies of the email reached American mathematical physicist John C. theses and papers were "spoof", created by throwing together instances of theoretical-physics jargon, including terminology from string theory: "The abstracts are delightfully meaningless combinations of buzzwords . Niedermaier suggested that the Bogdanoffs' Ph.D. Controversy over the Bogdanoffs' work began on 22 October 2002, with an email sent by University of Tours physicist Max Niedermaier to University of Pittsburgh physicist Ezra T. In 20, the brothers published five papers (including "Topological field theory of the initial singularity of spacetime") in peer-reviewed physics journals. Grichka (left) and Igor (right) Bogdanoff in 2010
Their grandmother spoke several languages, as well. The twins spoke German, in addition to French, Russian, and English. She tried to sustain her episodic relationship with Hayes after her divorce and his return to the United States, but declined his offer to legally adopt and raise their daughter, who became Igor and Grichka's mother. Her pregnancy by African-American tenor Roland Hayes caused her to forfeit access to her four elder children, to her palatial homes in Berlin and Prague, and also her reputation in European society. īertha Kolowrat-Krakowská belonged to the noble Kolowrat family of Bohemia and was married to a member of the Austrian princely house of Colloredo-Mannsfeld. The mirza did not exercise this right, and the title of "Prince Bogdanoff" was lost by the end of the 19th century. The Bogdanoff twins descended from a noble Muslim Tatar family traceable to the beginning of the 17th century, originally from Penza, one of whose mirzas converted to Orthodox Christianity, and was rewarded with the title of prince by a decree from Tsar Feodor III. They were raised by their maternal grandmother, Countess Bertha Kolowrat-Krakowská (1890–1982), in her castle in southern France. Igor Bogdanoff was born 40 minutes before Grichka.
Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff were identical twin brothers born to Maria "Maya" Dolores Franzyska Kolowrat-Krakowská (1926–1982) and Yuri Mikhaïlovitch Osten-Sacken-Bogdanoff (1928–2012), a Russian painter. The twins' maternal grandmother, Berta Kolowrat-Krakowská They were involved in a number of controversies, most notably the Bogdanov affair, in which it was alleged the brothers wrote nonsensical advanced physics papers that were nonetheless published in reputable scientific journals. Igor Yourievitch Bogdanoff (29 August 1949 – 3 January 2022) and Grégoire " Grichka" Yourievitch Bogdanoff (29 August 1949 – 28 December 2021) were French twin brother television presenters, producers, and scientific essayists who, from the 1970s on, presented various subjects in science fiction, popular science, and cosmology. Fluctuations quantiques de la signature de la métrique à l'échelle de Planck (1999)