Vasily Zubov

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Vasily Pavlovich Zubov (1 August 1900 – 8 April 1963) was a Russian and Soviet philosopher who wrote about architecture, art, and the history of science, using texts from the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Zubov was born in Alexandrov, near Moscow. His father, Pavel Vasilyevich Zubov, was a chemist who also enjoyed violin and numismatics. He studied classical languages and philosophy and graduated from Moscow University in 1922. He joined the State Academy of Artistic Sciences and helped create an encyclopedia of art from 1923 to 1929. He studied architecture during this time and, in 1946, wrote a doctoral thesis on Leon Battista Alberti's architectural theory, translating De re aedificatoria into Russian.

After World War II, Zubov studied the history of science at the Soviet Academy of Sciences and worked there until his death. One of his major works is a 1961 book on Leonardo da Vinci, which was translated into English. He argued against the idea that people in a period always follow a single, unchanging approach (Geistesgeschichte). In 1963, the History of Science Society awarded him a posthumous George Sarton Medal.