Grigorii Konstantinovich Khrushchov

Born Feb. 19 (Mar. 3), 1897, in the village of Telegino, Voronezh Province; died Dec. 22, 1962, in Moscow. Soviet histologist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953). Became a member of the CPSU in 1940.

In 1919, Khrushchov graduated from Moscow University; he worked at the university until 1930. He was a professor at the Moscow Veterinary Institute from 1933 to 1945 and at the Second Moscow Medical Institute from 1945 to 1960. Khrushchov served as director of the Institute of Cytology, Histology, and Embryology from 1939 to 1949; he held a similar position at the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Animal Morphology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR beginning in 1949.

Khrushchov’s principal works dealt with comparative and experimental histology and cytology. He was the first (1931–35) to cultivate leucocytes for the study of human chromosomes. Developing the ideas of E. Metchnikoff on the evolution of the organism’s defensive mechanisms against infection and tissue damage, he solved the problem of stimulating the action of blood leucocytes in restorative processes.

In 1949, Khrushchov won the E. Metchnikoff Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR for his work The Role of Blood Leucocytes in the Restorative Processes in Tissues (1945). He was also awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and various medals.