Valery Semenovich Durov[a] (Russian: Валерий Семёнович Дуров; (1945-07-13)13 July 1945[1]) is a Russian antiquarian, philologist and academician (Honored Worker of Higher Professional Education of the Russian Federation).
From 1992 until 2013, he was head of the Department of Classical Philology at St. Petersburg State University.
Durov graduated from the Philological Faculty of Leningrad University in 1968, was in graduate school at the Department of Classical Philology and in 1974 he defended his thesis "The Tenth Satire of Juvenal".
[2] His research interests include history and literature of ancient Rome, and he lectures and conducts seminars on the history of Roman literature and the various aspects of the Latin language (syntax of a simple sentence, case syntax, style, etc.).
[3] He is the father of Pavel Durov, the creator of the VK social network and the Telegram messaging service, as well as Nikolai Durov, a mathematician.