Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) was a member of The Five, a group of composers that promoted Russian nationalism through music. The illegitimate son of a Georgian nobleman, he was registered as the child of a Russian serf. He earned a degree in chemistry and spent his entire working life as a professor at the Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg, composing in his free time. A promoter of education and women’s rights, he founded the School of Medicine for Women in St. Petersburg. He is known for his symphonies, his tone poem In the Steppes of Central Asia, and his opera Prince Igor.