Meet The Most Controversial French Twins - Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff

Igor Yourievitch Bogdanoff (29 August 1949 – 3 January 2022) and Grégoire "Grichka" Yourievitch Bogdanoff (29 August 1949 – 28 December 2021) were French twin brother television presenters, producers, and scientific essayists who, from the 1970s on, presented various subjects in science fiction, popular science, and cosmology. They were involved in a number of controversies, most notably the Bogdanov affair, in which it was alleged the brothers wrote nonsensical advanced physics papers that were nonetheless published in reputable scientific journals. Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff were identical twin brothers born to Maria "Maya" Dolores Franzyska Kolowrat-Krakowská (1926–1982) and Yuri Mikhaïlovitch Osten-Sacken-Bogdanoff (1928–2012), a Russian painter. Igor Bogdanoff was born 40 minutes before Grichka. They were raised by their maternal grandmother, Countess Bertha Kolowrat-Krakowská (1890–1982), in her castle in southern France. The Bogdanoff twins descended from a noble Muslim Tatar family traceable to the beginning of the 17th century, originally from Penza, one of whose mirzas converted to Orthodox Christianity, and was rewarded with the title of prince by a decree from Tsar Feodor III. The mirza did not exercise this right, and the title of "Prince Bogdanoff" was lost by the end of the 19th century. Bertha Kolowrat-Krakowská belonged to the noble Kolowrat family of Bohemia and was married to a member of the Austrian princely house of Colloredo-Mannsfeld. Her pregnancy by African-American tenor Roland Hayes caused her to forfeit access to her four elder children, to her palatial homes in Berlin and Prague, and also her reputation in European society. She tried to sustain her episodic relationship with Hayes after her divorce and his return to the United States, but declined his offer to legally adopt and raise their daughter, who became Igor and Grichka's mother. The twins spoke German, in addition to French, Russian, and English. Their grandmother spoke several languages, as well.