James R. Russell was born in New York City to Joseph (Yosef Boruch ben Asher Zelig) and Charlotte (Rachel bat Margalit) Russell. He was Associate Professor of Ancient Iranian at Columbia and Mashtots Professor of Armenian at Harvard (now Emeritus); he has been a Lady Davis Fellow and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and serves on the editorial boards of Judaica Petropolitana, Acta Linguistica Petropolitana, Voprosy Teologii, Jewish Language, and Russkaya Filosofiya (St. Petersburg) and Iran and the Caucasus (Erevan). The most recent of his several hundred books and articles include Poets, Heroes, and Their Dragons (2 vols., University of California, Irvine, Iranian Series) and Misak Medzarents: The Complete Lyric Poems (California State University at Fresno Press).
