Concept

Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff

Summary
Igor Youriévitch Bogdanoff (iɡɔʁ juʁi.evitʃ bɔɡdanɔf; 29 August 1949 – 3 January 2022) and Grégoire "Grichka" Youriévitch Bogdanoff (ɡʁeɡwaʁ ɡʁiʃka; 29 August 1949 – 28 December 2021) were French twin television presenters, producers, and essayists who, from the 1970s on, presented various subjects in science fiction, popular science, and cosmology. They were involved in a number of controversies, most notably the Bogdanov affair, which brought to light the fact that the brothers had written nonsensical advanced physics papers that were nonetheless published in reputable scientific journals. Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff were identical twin brothers born to Maria "Maya" Dolores Franzyska Kolowrat-Krakowská (1926–1982), of Bohemian and Polish descent, and Yuri Mikhaïlovitch Bogdanoff (1928–2012), an itinerant Russian farm worker, later a painter. Igor was born 40 minutes before Grichka. They had no connection to, or involvement with, their father's family, and were raised by their maternal grandmother, Countess Bertha Kolowrat-Krakowská (1890–1982), in her castle in southern France. Bertha Kolowrat-Krakowská belonged to the noble Kolowrat family of Bohemia and was married to Count Hieronymus Colloredo-Mannsfeld (1870–1942), a member of the Austrian princely house of Colloredo-Mannsfeld. 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. 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, Maria, who became Igor and Grichka's mother. Although the Bogdanoff twins claimed to be descended paternally 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; the mirza did not exercise this right, and the title of "Prince Bogdanoff" was lost by the end of the 19th century), there is scant evidence for that.
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