Portrait of Timofey Granovsky by Pyotr Zakharov-Chechenets, 1845

Timofey Nikolayevich Granovsky (March 9, 1813 – October 4, 1855) was a founder of mediaeval studies in the Russian Empire.

Granovsky was born in Oryol, Russia.^[1] He studied at the universities of Moscow and Berlin, where he was profoundly influenced by Hegelian ideas of Leopold von Ranke and Friedrich Karl von Savigny. He felt that the Western history was superior to that of his own country, and became the first Russian to deliver courses on the medieval history of Western Europe (1839). Due to the strict censorship of the period, Granovsky didn't care to put his ideas in writing, assuming that lecturing provided a surer way of disseminating Western ideals in Russia. The best regarded of his printed works is a pioneering attempt to disprove the historicity of Vineta.

His readings in the Moscow University were immensely popular and brought him in touch with other Westernizers. One of these, Alexander Herzen, described Granovsky's lectures as "a draught of freedom in Nicholas I's Russia".

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• Biography and assessment (from Brockhaus and Efron) by Sir Paul Vinogradoff.

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