Vasil Aprilov

Who was Vasil Aprilov?

Vasil Evstatiev Aprilov was a Bulgarian educator. He studied in Moscow, graduated from a high school in Braşov and then pursued a medical degree in Vienna. After 1811 he was a merchant in Odessa. He initially participated in the Greek revolutionary movement, but later devoted himself to the Bulgarian Renaissance. He gathered Bulgarian folk songs. In his will he left a large amount of money for building the Aprilovska High School in Gabrovo. This was to be the first Bulgarian secular school using the Bell-Lancaster method. The emergence of this school gave a boost to Bulgarian education and soon other schools were opened all over the Bulgarian-populated regions of the Ottoman empire.

Aprilov Point on Greenwich Island, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named for Vasil Aprilov.