Nikolai Burdenko

    Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko (Russian: Николай Нилович Бурденко) (22 May [O.S. 3 June] 1876 – 11 November 1946) was a Russian surgeon, the founder of the Russian neurosurgery. He was a Head surgeon of the Red Army (1937-1946), an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (from 1939), an academician and the first president of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, (1944-1946), a Hero of Socialist Labor (from 1943), colonel-general of medicine, Stalin Prize-winner (1941). He was a participant of the Russo-Japanese, First World, Winter and Great Patriotic wars.

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Nikolai Burdenko was born 3 June 1876 in the village of Kamenka of the Nizhnelomovsky uezd. In 1891 he entered to the theological seminary and after graduation in 1897 he went to Tomsk where has entered into the recently opened Tomsk State University. After finishing two courses, Burdenko was excluded from the university for the participation in the student revolutionary movement and was forced to leave Tomsk. In 1906 he graduated from the University of Tartu and became in 1910 the professor of this university. In 1918 he becomes the professor of the University of Voronezh, from 1923 he was the professor of the medical department of the Moscow State University. This department in 1930 was reorganized into the 1st Moscow medical institute. Here he to the end of the life led the surgical clinic of the faculty, which bears now his name. Since 1929 Burdenkos was the director of the neurosurgical clinic of the X-ray institute of the People's Commissariat of Public Health, on the base of which in 1934 was founded the world's first neurosurgical institute. During World War II, 1n 1944, Burdenko was appointed as the chairman of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Katyn massacre. In the fact-finding of the commission, led by Burdenko, responsibility for these crimes was laid on the Germans; those findings are now considered by the CIA false and ordered by the Soviet government, which was responsible for the massacre [1].

Nikolai Burdenko one of the first introduced into the clinical practice the surgery of central and peripheral nervous system; he investigated the reason for appearance and the methods of treating shock, made a large contribution to the study of the processes, which appear in the central and peripheral nervous system in connection with the surgical operation in the case of the sharp injuries; he developed the bulbotomy - operation on the upper division of the spinal cord. Burdenko created the school of surgeons with the sharply pronounced experimental direction. Works in the domains of the oncology of central and vegetative nervous system, pathology of the liquor circulation, cerebral blood circulation, etc. were the valuable contribution of Burdenko and his school to theory and practice of neurosurgery.

It was rewarded with 3 Order of Lenin, with other orders and medals. He was the honorary member of the International Society of surgeons, Royal Society of London.

The name of Burdenko bear the SRI of the neurosurgery in Moscow, Сentral military hospital, the faculty of the surgical clinic of the Sechenov's medical academy, Penza provincial clinical hospital, street in Moscow, street in Voronezh.

Also asteroid 6754 Burdenko named in his honour.