Borys Fynkelshteyn was born into a Jewish family of mathematicians on August 20, 1946, in Odesa, the USSR. He is a direct descendant of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain by the Alhambra Decree of Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. His father, Hryhorii Fynkelshteyn, was a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, an associate professor, and spent the entire war at the front, rising from private to senior lieutenant. He received several awards. His mother, Ida Fynkelshteyn, was a mathematics teacher and spent the war in evacuation in Tomsk. After the war, his parents returned to their hometown of Odesa.

Until 1952, the family lived in Odesa, after which his father was transferred for work to Astrakhan as the head of the mathematics department at the Pedagogical Institute. His mother moved there and began teaching mathematics in a school. Borys graduated from high school in 1963. In the same year, the family moved to Simferopol, where his father worked as the head of the mathematics department at the Simferopol branch of the Sevastopol Instrument Engineering Institute. His mother began working as a mathematics teacher at a school, and Borys enrolled in the Odesa Electrotechnical Institute of Communications, from which he graduated in 1968.

After graduating from the institute, Borys served in the army for two years, first as a lieutenant and then as a senior lieutenant. He was discharged from the army in 1970 and worked for one year as a senior shift engineer at the long-distance telephone station in Simferopol. In 1971, he moved to work at the Sphegazproject institute, which was later transformed into the “All-Union Scientific Research and Design Institute of Oil and Gas Production Facilities on the Continental Shelf VNIPIshelf,” where he rose from senior engineer to deputy director for scientific work and economics.

In 1981, he enrolled in the correspondence postgraduate program at Lomonosov Moscow State University, which he completed in 1985. In January 1986, he defended his candidate dissertation on the topic: ‘Improving the Management of Development of Marine Oil and Gas Fields in the Waters of the Black, Azov, and Baltic Seas’. He was repeatedly appointed as the Chief Engineer of projects for major oil and gas facilities. In particular, he was the Chief Engineer for the ‘Feasibility Study for the Development of the Largest Shtokman Oil and Gas Field in the Waters of the Barents Sea’ in 1989-1990.

In 1992, Borys left the VNIPIshelf and began working in newly established companies in the financial market. In 1994, he created and headed the Crimean Regional Office of the commercial bank PrivatBank, which he managed as director until 2014. The bank became the largest banking institution in Crimea and subsequently serviced about 50 percent of the regional financial and banking market. In 2012, he was elected Chairman of the Crimean branch of the National Union of Writers of Ukraine.

In 2014, due to the liquidation of the banking system of Ukraine in Crimea, Borys resigned from PrivatBank and focused on writing. He has published over 300 scientific works on the development of marine oil and gas resources, economics, finance, and banking. He is a full member of the Ukrainian Technological Academy and the Israeli Academy of Science Development. He has been awarded the title of ‘Honored Economist of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea’. He is a member of the National Union of Writers of Ukraine and the International Union of Writers (United Kingdom), having published 29 artistic books and over 200 publications in literary journals. His literary works have been published in 15 languages in 17 countries, including Ukraine, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Spain, China, Chile, Israel, Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, and others. He holds state awards as well as awards from public organizations. He is a laureate and diploma winner of several literary prizes, including ‘Blagovest’, named after Vladimir Dal, the State Prize of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in the field of literature and art, and the State Prize of Ukraine named after Sholem Aleichem. He continues his scientific and writing activities.

Throughout his life, Borys has had numerous sports interests, including swimming, rowing, shooting, boxing, martial arts, mountaineering, and skiing. He continues to ski and 2026, he completed his 53rd season on the slopes. He also collects antique books and historical cold weapons. He is married and has a daughter and two adult grandchildren. Considering his family history, since 2014 he has primarily resided in Barcelona, 100 km from the city of Girona, where his ancestors once lived. Borys speaks Ukrainian, Russian, English, and Spanish. He is currently working on a new book.

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