Historical note

Olga Martynowa (1916-) was born Olga Thiessen to Dr. Isaac Thiessen and Katharina Wallman. Olga was born in the Mennonite colony of Chortitza. The home where she lived was burned down during the Russian revolution so the family moved to the Bethania Mental Hospital where her father worked. In 1927 they were forced to flee the facility due to flooding. The family settled in a house in Chortitza where her father soon become employed in a hospital. In 1933 he and was arrested and the family moved to Alma Ata close to where Isaac was serving his sentence. After he was released the family moved to Tashkent where Olga got a job working as a chemist. Here she married a Russian engineer. In 1945 she began work in the Moscow Energy school. Here she met her future second husband who she married in 1946 and they together had two children, one of them named Natasha. She continued her work and studied to become a chemical engineer. She is fluent in Russian and German and knows some English. She began to attend international conference related to atomic energy in 1969 in Pittsburg.