Yuri Senkevich

Yuri Senkevich, a Russian documentary filmmaker and television host, died on Sept. 25 from heart failure. He was 66.
Senkevich was born in Mongolia and earned a medical degree from the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg. In 1962, he took a job monitoring the health of cosmonauts for a biomedical-research institute. He and two other doctors were then selected to fly into space aboard Voskhod 5. But when that mission was canceled, Senkevich quit the program and became a documentary filmmaker.
To study the effects of long-term isolation, Senkevich traveled to Antarctica in 1968 to document the topic. The project earned him a USSR State Prize. He achieved international fame in 1969 when Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl invited him to participate in a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean — on a papyrus raft.
For the past four decades, however, Senkevich hosted “Traveler’s Club,” a travelogue that sent him on adventures around the world. It was Russia’s longest running TV show.