Boris Delone got his surname from his ancestor French Army officer de Launay, who was captured in Russia during Napoleon's invasion of 1812.

He married a woman from the noble Tukhachevsky family [ru] and stayed in Russia.

[1] When Boris was a young boy his family spent summers in the Alps where he learned mountain climbing.

[3] Future Nobel laureate in physics Igor Tamm was his associate in setting tourist camps in the mountains.

[6] Delaunay is credited as being an organizer, in Leningrad in 1934, of the first mathematical olympiad for high school students in the Soviet Union.