The life of a prominent scholar and organizer of science, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences S. R. Mikulinskii (1919–1991) who had been determining strategic directions for the development of the history of science and laying foundations for science of science in the 1960s–1980s was full of tragic turns. In his biography, the years of schooling were followed by volunteering in the army during the Great Patriotic War, the years of being a prisoner in the  Nazi – and then Soviet – camps, followed by the years of studies and a meteoric scientific career which had abruptly ended with his eviction from the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Institute for the History of Science and Technology that he himself had nurtured. Under his guidance, the prominent scientists in a wide range of disciplines had been brought together at the Institute that reached the peak of its development, having become a globally recognized center for the development of thought in the history of science. The paper is based on the archive materials introduced for scientific use for the first time.