George Gurdjieff is one of the more interesting and influential characters of the 20th century. Born in Armenia in the 1870s, he spent much of his early life wandering the world in search of "ancient wisdom." He returned to Russia just before WWI and started teaching.
His book "Meetings with Remarkable Men," made into a movie, details some of those travels. He was sometimes a wiley opportunist, but discovered many important ideas, described in his other books and those of Ouspensky.