World Economic Forum Original uploader was Keverich1 at en.wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

Boris Nemtsov trained as a physicist before becoming, at 31, the youngest regional governor in Russia's post-Soviet government, appointed by Boris Yeltsin to reform Nizhny Novgorod's economy. He went on to serve as deputy prime minister and, after 2000, as the most prominent opposition voice against Vladimir Putin, publishing detailed reports tying Kremlin corruption directly to the president and organizing marches against rigged elections. He was shot dead on a bridge steps from the Kremlin in 2015, in a killing that remains formally unsolved.