Alexey Pajitnov

Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov is a Russian and American computer engineer and video game designer, born in Moscow in 1955. While working at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences he created the game Tetris in 1985, writing it while testing new computing equipment. Because he was employed by a Soviet state institution he received no royalties from the game for years despite its worldwide popularity, until he moved to the United States after the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991 and co-founded The Tetris Company with Henk Rogers in 1996.