On September 13, 2024, the creator of the first version of the search engine and the author of the word Yandex, Ilya Segalovich, would have turned 60 years old. An erudite, a citizen with an active life position, as his colleagues called him, a father of five children and one of the organizers of the rehabilitation art center “Children of Mary” left a bright mark in history.
ITAR-TASS
Ilya Segalovich (1964-2013).
Ilya Segalovich was born on September 13, 1964 in Gorky in a family of geophysicists. His father is the famous scientist, laureate of the USSR State Prize Valentin Segalovich, who discovered the largest chromite deposit in the South Kempirsai mining region of Kazakhstan.
The Segalovich family lived in Alma-Ata for a long time. Ilya entered the republican physics and mathematics school, where he met his future colleague, Yandex co-founder Arkady Volozh. The boys sat at the same desk for four years and became best friends.
Ilya was a gifted student. In 1981, he came in second at the All-Union Mathematics Olympiad. He was supposed to be sent to the United States, where he would defend the honor of the USSR at the international Olympiad. But the boy was unable to travel abroad: the trip of the Soviet delegation was cancelled.
Segalovich graduated from school with a gold medal, decided, together with Arkady, to enroll in Moscow State University, but they did not get into the university – they did not pass the competition. The young man followed in his father’s footsteps – he became a student at the Ordzhonikidze Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute. He chose a rare direction for those times – computer systems for studying deposits, and began programming in Fortran.
During his studies, Ilya was a pioneer leader at the “Geolog” camp. As MGIMO associate professor Alexander Rabinovich, who was in his detachment, recalled, Segalovich was an amazing person, unlike anyone else: “He was constantly generating different ideas. On the day of arrival, according to tradition, it was necessary to come up with a name for the detachment. There were proposals with standard names: “Bonfire”, “Zarnitsa”, “Orlyonok”. Ilya suggested moving away from cliches and calling our detachment “Everest” – as the highest peak to which we must strive… Another of his qualities was straightforwardness, he could say everything he thought, even to a person’s face. And it sounded somehow so simple and sincere that no one had the desire to be offended.”
Ilya Segalovich (center). Photo: Yandex Press Service
Ilya graduated with honors from the university and was assigned to the All-Union Institute of Mineral Resources. He became seriously interested in programming – he was constantly learning new things, studying translated books. Arkady Volozh graduated from the Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas and, together with a programmer from the computing center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, created the company “Arcadia”. Ilya joined them.
The programmers started creating a system for classifying inventions for the Research Institute of Patent Information, based on the morphology of language. They managed to create a very successful “box” solution and advertise it through a newspaper – there was no end to those wishing to purchase the product.
After that, the programmers combined a digital dictionary, purchased from one of the international companies, with a morphological system they had developed. Next came a search engine for digitalized Bible texts, then for the complete collections of Pushkin and Griboyedov.
In 1993, Ilya Segalovich came up with the memorable name Yandex – its basis was the English word index, at the beginning of which they put the Russian letter “Я”. In 1996, the search engine began to work fully thanks to the bot developed for the index of Russian-language resources.
“The idea of earning money with your own intellect in the 90s was completely crazy, but we chose it, not Royal alcohol or banks… Mathematics was the platform that united us all in an extraordinary way,” Segalovich recalled. This is how the history of one of the largest Russian IT companies began. And Ilya, according to Arkady Volozh, left behind a new generation of programmers, an entire school: “His ethical standards set the standard for all of us.”
Segalovich was not only a talented programmer. His wife Maria created the public organization “Maria’s Children”, which was engaged in the development of orphans and children with disabilities. And Ilya organized a charity foundation that financed it. He himself was a volunteer: he came to small hospital patients in a clown costume from the team of the American doctor Patch Adams to make them smile; he helped the children of Beslan, visited the pupils of orphanages. His large family consisted, among other things, of adopted children.
“One day, Ilya and I were driving in the car, listening to Brazilian jazz, discussing personal matters. It was a rather difficult time – 1999. And in the conversation, Ilya’s remark flashed that all his personal receipts for the year ahead were scheduled for “Children of Maria”. Ilya was not an abstractly kind person, but an actively kind person. He tried to change the world, to help, and he did it with all his might,” recalled his comrade Vadim Bogdanov.
In 2012, Ilya Segalovich was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Doctors gave favorable prognoses for treatment, but later the Yandex co-founder was also diagnosed with a brain tumor, which caused meningitis. Segalovich fell into a coma. On July 27, 2013, his death was registered: Ilya was disconnected from life support systems by decision of his relatives. He was 48 years old. Segalovich was buried at the Troekurovskoye Cemetery: a forged tree was installed on his grave, in the crown of which a transparent ball with a metal sphere inside was fixed – as a symbol of rebirth.
Colleagues created on Yandex page Ilya Segalovich, where memories of him are published. “A lot will be said and written about him: about his role in the development of the Russian Internet and Yandex in particular, and about “Children of Maria” and much more. If there were a chamber of measures and weights for people somewhere, then Ilya would be an example of a real person, imperfect, but wonderful, thoughtful, sincere, kind,” wrote Yandex employee Elvira Mukhametshina.
Source: rodina-history.ru
