of six children. He worked briefly at the Nevsky shipping company, then at the Maltsov locomotive factory at Dyatkovo. He fell ill in 1901 and went to a spa in Badenweiler and died from a sarcoma in Heidelberg.

Yarkovsky's little-known publication was read and acknowledged by Estonian astronomer Ernst J. Öpik in 1951. Öpik had read the pamphlet in 1909 while at school and had remembered that the effect could either add or counter the Poynting-Robertson effect