Struve's education at the University of Kharkov was interrupted by World War I and the Russian Civil War, which left him a refugee in Turkey. He went to the United States in 1921, obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and eventually became head of the astronomy department there. In 1932, he was made joint director of the University's Yerkes Observatory and McDonald Observatory (which he founded and where a telescope is named after him). Struve may be regarded as the father of modern SETI. He was one of the few eminent astronomers in the pre-Space Age era to publicly express a belief that extraterrestrial intelligence was abundant.