(Following a recent speech I gave at Chatham House on Russian perspectives on international law, a junior colleague of mine, whom we shall call “C.M.”, punched up a nice biography of the lawyer Fedor Martens, detailing the life and work of one of the country’s greatest legal minds.)

Fyodor Fyodorovich Martens (also Frederic Frommhold de Martens, or Friedrich Fromhold von Martens) is one of Russia’s most famous and most respected international lawyers. He was born in 1845 in Livonia, a nation of the former Russian Empire. Raised as a German speaker, on the death of his parents he was sent to a Lutheran orphanage in Saint Petersburg. He completed his schooling and in 1963 entered the University of Saint Petersburg where he studied Law. At the age of 23 he started work at the prestigious Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He went on to lecture International Law at his alma-mater as well as at the “Imperial School of Law” and the “Imperial Alexander Lyceum”.