Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov (born April 16, 1955) is a Soviet-born American computer engineer and video game designer. He is best-known for designing and developing Tetris in 1984 while working at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre under the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union (now the Russian Academy of Sciences). In 1991, he moved to the United States and later became a U.S. citizen. In 1996, Pajitnov founded The Tetris Company alongside Dutch video game designer Henk Rogers. Pajitnov did not receive royalties from Tetris prior to this time, despite the game's high popularity. Early life and education Pajitnov was born to parents who were both writers. His father was an art critic. His mother was a journalist who wrote for both newspapers and a film magazine. It was through his parents that Pajitnov gained exposure to the arts, eventually developing a passion for cinema. He accompanied his mother to many film screenings, including the Moscow Film Festival. Pajitnov was also mathematically inclined, enjoying puzzles and problem solving. In 1967, when he was 11 years old, Pajitnov's parents divorced. For several years, he lived with his mother in a one-bedroom apartment owned by the state. The two were eventually able to move into a private apartment at 49 Gertsen Street, when Pajitnov was 17. He later went on to study applied mathematics at the Moscow Aviation Institute. Career In 1977, Pajitnov worked as a summer intern at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Once he graduated in 1979, he accepted a job there working on speech recognition at the Academy's Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre. When the Computing Centre received new equipment, its researchers would write a small program for it in order to test its computing capabilities. According to Pajitnov, this "became [his] excuse for making games". Computer games were fascinating to him because they offered a way to bridge the gap between logic and emotion, and Pajitnov held interests in both mathematics and puzzles, as well as the psychology of computing. Searching for inspiration, Pajitnov recalled his childhood memories of playing pentominoes, a game where you create pictures using its shapes. Remembering the difficulty he had in putting the pieces back into their box, Pajitnov felt inspired to create a game based on that concept. Using an Electronika 60 in the Computing Centre, he began working on what would become the first version of Tetris. Building the first prototype in two weeks,