Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky (Russian: Игорь Иванович Сикорский, IPA: [ˈiɡərʲ ɪˈvanəvitʃ sʲɪˈkorskʲɪj] ⓘ, Ukrainian: Ігор Іванович Сікорський, romanized: Ihor Ivanovych Sikorskyi; 25 May 1889 – 26 October 1972)[4] was a Russian–American[1][2][3] aviation pioneer in both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.

[5] His S-6-A received the highest award at the 1912 Moscow Aviation Exhibition, and in the fall of that year the aircraft won first prize for its young designer, builder and pilot in the military competition at Saint Petersburg.

While homeschooling young Igor, she gave him a great love for art, especially in the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci, and the stories of Jules Verne.

After returning home, Sikorsky began to experiment with model flying machines, and by age 12, he had made a small rubber band-powered helicopter.

In 1906, he determined that his future lay in engineering, so he resigned from the academy, despite his satisfactory standing, and left the Russian Empire to study in Paris.

After the academic year, Sikorsky again accompanied his father to Germany in the summer of 1908, where he learned of the accomplishments of the Wright brothers' Flyer and Ferdinand von Zeppelin's rigid airships.

After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Igor Sikorsky fled his homeland in early 1918, because the Bolsheviks threatened to shoot him for being "the Tsar's friend and a very popular person".

But in November 1918 the war ended, and the French government stopped subsidizing military orders, whereupon he decided to move to the United States.

[21][22][23][24] With financial backing from his sister Olga, Sikorsky returned to Paris, the center of the aviation world at the time, in 1909.

Powered by a 25 horsepower Anzani engine, the helicopter used an upper and lower two-bladed lifting propeller that rotated in opposite directions at 160 rpm.

[26] I had learned enough to recognize that with the existing state of the art, engines, materials, and – most of all – the shortage of money and lack of experience...

His second design, called the S-2, was powered by a 25 hp Anzani engine in a tractor configuration and first flew on June 3, 1910, at a height of a few feet.

On June 30, after some modifications, Sikorsky reached an altitude of "sixty or eighty feet" before the S-2 stalled and was completely destroyed when it crashed in a ravine.

The close call convinced Sikorsky of the need for an aircraft that could continue flying if it lost an engine.

[30] In early 1912, Igor Sikorsky became Chief Engineer of the aircraft division for the Russian Baltic Railroad Car Works (Russko-Baltiisky Vagonny Zavod or R-BVZ)[32] in Saint Petersburg.

[35] Seeing little opportunity for himself as an aircraft designer in war-torn Europe, and particularly Russia, ravaged by the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War, he emigrated to the United States, arriving in New York on March 30, 1919.

[41] The performance of the S-29, slow when compared to military aircraft of 1918, proved to be a "make or break" moment for Sikorsky's funding.

They were divorced and Olga remained in Russia with their daughter, Tania, as Sikorsky departed following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.

[47] Sikorsky died at his home in Easton, Connecticut, on October 26, 1972, and is buried in Saint John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Cemetery, located on Nichols Avenue in Stratford.

[59] The Sikorsky's family house in the city's historical center is preserved to this day but is in a neglected condition pending restoration.

Summarizing his beliefs, in the latter he wrote: Our concerns sink into insignificance when compared with the eternal value of human personality — a potential child of God which is destined to triumph over life, pain, and death.