Following World War II, he was one of the founders of Russian, Slavic, East European and Byzantine studies at Stanford University, where he spent his entire academic career.
Vucinich was born in the United States to a family of Serb immigrants who had come from Bosnia in the early twentieth century.
[1] He was born in Butte, Montana in 1913,[2] and lived there until he was orphaned at 5 years old and then sent back to Herzegovina.
[3] After graduating, Vucinich joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and worked as an analyst for the Balkans and the Soviet Union during the Second World War.
In 1977, he was appointed as Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of Eastern European Studies at Stanford, a chair first established for Vucinich.