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Aviation genius and pioneer Igor Sikorsky. Aviation pioneer Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky was born May 25, 1889, in Kiev, which at the time was part of Russia but is now the capital of Ukraine. He created the first successful helicopter in 1939 and is credited with many other outstanding accomplishments in the field of aircraft design. Educated as an engineer and designer, Sikorsky developed an interest in man-powered flight in his youth. He was fascinated by the work done up to that point by the Wright Brothers and by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. After leaving the Petrograd Naval College, he traveled to Europe to study engineering and aviation in Paris. In 1907, he went home to Kiev where he completed his studies at the Mechanical Engineering College of the Polytechnical Institute, now named the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. He returned to Paris with plans to build a helicopter. Engineers had been attempting to build such a device for years, the first flown – unsuccessfully – in 19
