The title of Prince of Tver was borne by the head of the branch of the Rurikid dynasty that ruled the Principality of Tver. In 1247 Tver was allocated to Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky, and became an independent principality. In 1252, the principality passed to his brother Yaroslav, who became the ancestor of the Tver dynasty of princes.

In 1485, Ivan III of Moscow conquered Tver, and until 1490, his son Ivan governed the duchy.

Tver (Russian: Тверь; IPA: [tvʲerʲ]) is a city and the administrative center of Tver Oblast, Russia. Population: 403,726 (2010 Census preliminary results); 408,903 (2002 Census); 450,941 (1989 Census).

Located north of Moscow, Tver was formerly the capital of a powerful medieval state and a model provincial town in the Russian Empire, with a population of 60,000 on January 14, 1913. It is situated at the confluence of the Volga and Tvertsa Rivers. The city was known as Kalinin (Кали́нин) from 1931 to 1990.

The first written record of Tver is dated 1135.^{[citation needed]} Originally a minor settlement of Novgorodian traders, it passed to the Grand Prince of Vladimir in 1209. In 1246, Alexander Nevsky granted it to his younger brother Yaroslav Yaroslavich (d. 1271), from whom a dynasty of local princes descended. Four of them were killed by the Golden Horde and were proclaimed saints by the Russian Orthodox church.

Formerly a land of woods and bogs, the Principality of Tver was quickly transformed into one of the richest and most populous Russian states. As the area was hardly accessible for Tatar raids, there was a great influx of population from the recently devastated South. By the end of the century, it was ready to vie with Moscow for supremacy in Russia. Both Tver and Moscow were young cities, so the outcome of their rivalry was far from being certain.

The title grand prince or great prince (Latin: Magnus Princeps; Belarusian: Вялíкі князь, 'Vyaliki knyaz'; German: Großfürst; Finnish: Suuriruhtinas; Danish: Storfyrste; Russian: Великий князь, Velikiy knyaz; Swedish: Storfurste; Croatian: Veliki knez; Serbian: veliki župan/велики жупан; Lithuanian: Didysis kunigaikštis; Hungarian: Nagyfejedelem; Czech: Velkokníže; Polish: Wielki książę; Turkish: Büyük prens, Granprens, Ukrainian: Великий князь, Velykyi kniaz) ranked in honour below emperor and tsar and above a sovereign prince (or Fürst).

Grand duke is the usual and established, though not literal, translation of these terms in English and Romance languages, which do not normally use separate words for a "prince" who reigns as a monarch (e.g. Albert II, Prince of Monaco) and a "prince" who does not reign, but belongs to a monarch's family (e.g. Prince William, Duke of Cambridge). German, Dutch, Slavic and Scandinavian languages do use separate words to express this concept, and in those languages grand prince is understood as a distinct title (for a cadet of a dynasty) from grand duke (hereditary ruler ranking below a king).

Saint Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy (Russian: Дми́трий Ива́нович Донско́й,also known as Dimitrii), or Dmitry of the Don, sometimes referred to as Dmitry I (12 October 1350, Moscow – 19 May 1389, Moscow), son of Ivan II the Meek of Moscow (1326–1359), reigned as the Prince of Moscow from 1359 and Grand Prince of Vladimir from 1363 to his death. He was the first prince of Moscow to openly challenge Mongol authority in Russia. His nickname, Donskoy (i.e., "of the Don"), alludes to his great victory against the Tatars in the Battle of Kulikovo (1380) which took place on the Don River. He is venerated as a Saint in the Orthodox Church with his feast day on 19 May.

Dmitry ascended the throne of Principality of Moscow at the age of 9. During his minority, the government was actually run by Metropolitan Aleksey of Russia. In 1360 the highest dignity among Russian princes, that of Grand Prince of Vladimir, was transferred by a Khan of the Golden Horde upon Dmitry Konstantinovich of Nizhniy Novgorod. In 1363, when that prince had been deposed, Dmitry Ivanovich was finally crowned at Vladimir. Three years later, he made peace with Dmitriy Konstantinovich and married his daughter Eudoxia. In 1376, their joined armies ravaged Volga Bulgaria.

Thomas Gold (May 22, 1920 – June 22, 2004) was an Austrian-born astrophysicist, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the Royal Society (London). Gold was one of three young Cambridge scientists who in the 1950s proposed the now mostly abandoned 'steady state' hypothesis of the universe. Gold's work crossed academic and scientific boundaries, into biophysics, astronomy, aerospace engineering, and geophysics.

Gold was born on May 22, 1920 in Vienna, Austria to Max Gold, a wealthy Jewish industrialist (pre-war) who ran one of Austria's largest mining and metal fabrication companies, and German former actress Josefine Martin. Following the economic downfall of the European mining industry in the late 1920s, Max Gold moved his family to Berlin, where he had taken a job as director of a metal trading company. Following the start of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's anti-Jewish campaigns in 1933, Gold and his family left Germany because of his father's heritage. The family traveled through Europe for the next few years. Gold attended boarding school at the Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz in Zuoz, Switzerland, where he quickly proved to be a clever, competitive and physically and mentally aggressive individual. Gold finished his schooling at Zuoz in 1938, and fled with his family to England after the German invasion of Austria in early 1938. Gold entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1939 and began studying mechanical sciences. In May 1940, just as Hitler was commencing his advance in Belgium and France, Gold was sent into internment as an enemy alien by the British government. It was on the first night of internment, at an army barracks in Bury St Edmunds, that he met his future collaborator and close friend, Hermann Bondi.