Lev Gromashevskii

Born Oct. 1 (13). 1887, in Nikolaev. Soviet epidemiologist; academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944), Honored Scientist of the Ukrainian SSR (1957), and Hero of Socialist Labor (1967). Member of the CPSU since 1905.

Gromashevskii graduated from the medical department of the University of Novorossiia (Odessa) in 1912, a student of D. K. Zabolotnyi. In 1917 he was a delegate to the first and second Northwest Regional Conferences of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP; Bolsheviks), a member of the Northwest Regional Committee of the RSDLP(B), chairman of the Bolshevik fraction of the Executive Committee of the Western Front, a member of the Constituent Assembly from the RSDLP(B), and People’s Commissar of Education and Public Health of the Western Region. Gromashevskii was an assistant, professor, and director of the subdepartment of epidemiology and rector of the Odessa Medical Institute between 1918 and 1928; director of the Dnepropetrovsk Sanitation and Bacteriological Institute from 1928 to 1931; and director of the Central Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology of the People’s Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR from 1931 to 1933. During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 he was chief epidemiologist of the Transcaucasian and Crimean fronts and the Moscow Military District. He was director of the Institute of Infectious Diseases of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR from 1948 to 1951 and director of the sub-department of epidemiology of the Kiev Medical Institute from 1951 to 1963. He has been with the Kiev Institute of Epidemiology. Microbiology, and Parasitology since 1963.

Gromashevskii’s main work has been in the general theory of epidemiology and the epidemiology of typhus and typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, and infectious hepatitis. He developed a theory of the mechanism of transmission of infections and a classification of infectious diseases in which subgroups of the diseases are determined according to pathogenetic signs. He has also worked on the scientific and organizational problems of disinfection work in the USSR. Gromashevskii has been awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and medals.