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The core of Beverton and Holt's seminal work of the 1950s had been anticipated by Baranov 30 years earlier, but his contributions, published in Russian, remained poorly known to Anglophone scientists until after 1945. By that time, Russell and Graham had presented parallel ideas, though without Baranov's mathematics. Limited subsequent acknowledgement of the Russian's contributions has left an impression that each of his advances was achieved independently in England, hence that they contributed little to the Beverton–Holt model. I here construct a timeline of events linking and separating the Russian and English studies. From it, I argue that both Russell's presentation of the underlying concepts and Graham's decision to pursue a mathematical realization of his "Modern Theory" may have been influenced by translations of Baranov's papers. Moreover, when Holt developed the "simple" Beverton–Holt model during 1946–1947, he certainly drew on Baranov's exponential model of mortality, though perhaps only via Ricker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]