Rein Taagepera (born 28 February 1933) is an Estonian political scientist and former politician.
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Education
Taagepera was born on 28 February 1933 in Tartu, Estonia. He fled from Soviet-occupied Estonia in 1944. Taagepera graduated from high school in Marrakesh, Morocco, and studied physics in Canada and the United States. He received a B.A. Sc in Nuclear Engineering in 1959 and a M.A. in Physics in 1961 from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. from the University of Delaware in 1965. Working in industry until 1970, he received another M.A. in international relations in 1969 and moved to academia as a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, where he stayed for his American career. Taagepera is professor emeritus at the University of Tartu.
Political career
Taagepera served as president of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies from 1986 until 1988. In 1991, he returned to Estonia as the founding dean of a new School of Social Sciences at the University of Tartu, which merged into a full-fledged faculty in 1994, and where he became professor of political science (1994–1998).