Who is Boris Pasternak?

I was at Goodwill and a little book was sitting, jutting out and it caught my eye. It's a basic little book with a sketch of a man's face on it entitled, "Poems" by Boris Pasternak. Not being much of a poetry reader I didn't think much of it, but the plainness of the sketch demanded that I opened it. It's a dual language book with Russian on the left hand side and English on the right. I was again intrigued by the peculiarity of this book and decided to read the first little poem. After reading it I decided it was worth the $1.99 price tag (much to my surprise, the color coordination of Goodwill meant that it was only $.99).

The lines that caught my eye:

"This close air is as flat as the boards
In the pond. The sky's flat on its face.
It would be fun if these stars guffawed-
But the universe is a dull place" (Pasternak, 113).

The bleakness spoke to me. But, who is Boris Pasternak? I don't really know. I found out from Wikipedia that he wrote Doctor Zhivago and this was unfortunately after I bought the book. My only experience with Doctor Zhivago was trying to watch it one time with Erin and falling asleep somewhere within the first third of the movie. But, I'm excited to see where Boris will take me when I pick it up.