Samarkand Physics Teacher Yuri Zakharovich Nektalov Remembered at 100 by His Son, Niece and Former Students

This report was translated from Russian by Bukharian Jewish Post from remembrances published in The Bukharian Times. The Bukharian Times devoted four remembrances in its Oct. 29 edition to Yuri Zakharovich (Uriel) Nektalov, a physics teacher remembered by generations of Bukharian Jews from Samarkand, to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth. They were written by his son, his niece and two former students. According to his son, a conference on the centenary, organized by Nektalov’s nephew Rafael Nektalov, editor-in-chief of The Bukharian Times, will be held on Nov. 1, and a similar conference is planned in Israel in 2027. The remembrance did not give a venue or time for the Nov. 1 event. A life in Samarkand’s Jewish quarter Nektalov was born on Aug. 9, 1926, to Zevulun Nektalov and Nekadam Yagudaeva, the second of five sons, according to his son’s account and that of a former student. His son wrote that he graduated with honors from School No. 25 in 1943 and was offered a teaching post that exempted him from military service. He first turned it down, but accepted after his older brother Boris was reported missing at the front. Boris had in fact been taken prisoner, escaped, fought again and returned in 1946. Nektalov taught physics, and according to one former student also astronomy, at Schools No. 25 and No. 26 in the Jewish quarter known as Vostok, working day and evening shifts. He studied at a teachers’ institute and completed a correspondence degree at the Dushanbe Pedagogical Institute in 1965. His son wrote that he repeatedly refused to join the Communist Party. The remembrances describe repeated loss. His first wife, Lyuba Yagudaeva, a former pupil whom he married in 1946, died of jaundice at 24 on May 15, 1954, according to his son (a former student dated her death to 1953). She left three young children. His second wife, Mafrat, raised seven children, four of them her own, and died in 1976. He married a third time in 1978. Nektalov died on June 26, 1983 (15 Tammuz), weeks short of his 57th birthday, his son wrote, after suffering what appeared to be a heart attack at a memorial gathering. Remembered by students and family A former student whose father, Gavriel Normatov, was Nektalov’s colleague recalled meeting him days before his death, when Nektalov told him: “Before you do anything, think about what its consequences will be. People will remember everything, both the good and the bad.” Another former student, who became a physician, wrote that Nektalov set up modern, equipped classrooms and inspired him to study physics, chemistry and astronomy on his own. His niece wrote that it was her uncle who noticed the musical ability of her young brother Rafael and took him to audition at the newly opened Music School No. 3, making him the family’s first violinist and musicologist. She described a man fluent in literary Tajik who recited Omar Khayyam at family Passover gatherings, knew the melodies of Shashmaqam, and was sought out in the quarter to settle family disputes and to speak at funerals and memorials. His son wrote that two grandsons and a nephew bear his name. “Yuri Zakharovich became part of the history of the Bukharian Jews of 20th-century Samarkand,” he wrote. Sources: The Bukharian Times, “Remembering My Father,” Oct. 29, 2026 (in Russian); The Bukharian Times, “Yuri Zakharovich: Mentor to Generations of Bukharian Jews of Samarkand,” Oct. 29, 2026 (in Russian); The Bukharian Times, “My Uncle, Yuri Zakharovich Nektalov,” Oct. 29, 2026 (in Russian); The Bukharian Times, “A Teacher Who Cannot Be Forgotten,” Oct. 29, 2026 (in Russian); The Bukharian Times, “Nisim Mosheev: A Heart Left in Samarkand,” Oct. 29, 2026 (in Russian).