The name is a variant of Wishniak, or Wisniak. Our family adopted the name in the early 19th century while our ancestor, Eliezur Elimelech Vishniak, was living in the town of Bielsk-Podlaski, Poland. Within our family it has been spelled as Vischniac, Vishniak, and even Wischniak. The original spelling is unknown, but it appears on the tombstone of one of Eliezur's sons as (vav-vav-shin-nun-yud-koof).
My wife Kathy (nee Kathleen Kohl) runs our house and teaches nursery school. Our older son David attends Arlington High School and is heavily into sports. Jordan goes to the Ottoson Middle School and reads voluminously.
My brother, Ethan Vishniac, formerly of The University of Texas at Austin, is now with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. His wife, Ilene Busch-Vishniac, was Dean of Engineering there but is now resuming her research career.
Ethan and Ilene's daughters, Cady and Miriam, attend schools in Baltimore. Cady will start college this fall (2004).
My mother, Dr. Helen Vishniac, is an emeritus professor of Microbiology at Oklahoma State University.
My father, the late Wolf V. Vishniac, has a Martian crater named in his honor. Vishniac crater is just below the center of this picture, and is the larger and more southerly of the two adjacent craters known as the "Giant's Footprint". Vishniac crater is an important location in Kim Stanley Robinson's novel Green Mars.
My grandfather, the
late Roman
S. Vishniac, is best known for his photographs of European Jewish
life before World War II. Many of these pictures are collected in "A
Vanished World" and "To Give Them Light". Copies of his photographs
can be acquired through the Howard Greenberg
Gallery in New York City. There's a brief biography
on encyclopedia.com and a longer
biography in Wikipedia. You
can find many of Roman's
books on amazon.com and on
barnesandnoble.com.
Roman's cousin Mark Veniaminovich Vishniak was very active in politics circa the Russian revolution. Indiana University has some of his correspondence in the Lilly library.
If your spelling's a bit off, you might be looking for our cousin, Gerard Vichniac, or Gerard's wife, Judy Vichniac, who works at Harvard University. Their children, Avi and Rebecca, are also reachable on-line.
Peter S. Vishniac, no relation to any other Vishniac mentioned here, worked at the University of California San Francisco. I haven't heard from him in several years and can't find any sign that he's still there.
Floyd Wayne Vishniak, no relation to anybody, is a fictional character in pseudonymous Stephen Bury's cyber-something novel Interface.
