Here is an article (published in the proceedings of the Arizona Winter School 2007) written by Vladimir Berkovich. It contains his own account of the discovery of what are nowadays known as `Berkovich Spaces' in non-archimedean analytic geometry. Interspersed between mathematical explanations, Berkovich also tells about the hardships that he had to overcome during his life in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Quote:
I was very lucky to be accepted to Moscow State University for undergraduate and, especially, for graduate studies in spite of the well-known Soviet policy of that time towards Jewish citizens. I finished studying in 1976, and got a Ph.D. the next year. (My supervisor was Professor Yuri Manin.) Getting an academic position would be too much luck, and the best thing I could hope for was the job of a computer programmer at a factory of agricultural machines and, later, at the institute of information in agriculture. As a result, I practically stopped doing mathematics, did not produce papers, and was considered by my colleagues as an outsider. It took me several years to become an expert in computers and nearby fields, and to learn to control my time. Gradually I started doing mathematics again, and my love for it blazed up with new force and became independent of surrounding circumstances. By the time my story begins, I was hungry for mathematics as never before.
And another quote:
My job occupied me five days per week from 8am till 5pm. It took me several years to learn to devote an hour or two to mathematics during working hours. Time free from my job belonged to my family, and when I was completely hooked on mathematics and an hour or two per day was not enough for it, I discovered an additional source of time. I learned to get up every day very early (often as early as at 2am), and thus extended the time for doing mathematics. At this time of the day, the world around me was quiet and fresh, nobody and nothing disturbed me, my head was clear, and I could plunge into another world to explore and describe it.