George Yuri Rainich (né Rabinovich) was born in Russia on March 25, 1886. He studied mathematics at universities in Odessa, Göttlingen and Munich, obtaining a Magister of Pure Mathematics at the University of Kazan in 1913. He then taught at Kazan and Odessa until 1922, when he came to the United States of America with his wife Sophie. He was a Johnston Scholar at Johns Hopkins from 1923-1926, and taught at the University of Michigan until his retirement in 1956. After retirement, he lectured as a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame. Rainich returned to the University of Michigan after the death of his wife in 1963 and remained active in the field until his death on October 10, 1968. Rainich's focus of study was relativity theory, but he also studied electromagnetic theory, linear vector functions, and analytical vector functions. He taught classes in geometry, higher algebra, vector analysis, theory of probability, and partial differential equations of mathematical physics.