Nikolai Kolosov

Born Apr. 18 (30), 1897, in the village of Krasnaia Sosna, in present-day Karsun Raion, Ul’ianovsk Oblast. Soviet neurohistologist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR since 1953 and of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR since 1945.

Kolosov graduated from the department of medicine of the University of Kazan in 1924. He was head of the subdepartment of histology at the Stalingrad Medical Institute from 1939 to 1945 and of the Saratov Medical Institute from 1945 to 1950. In 1950 he became head of the morphology laboratory of the I. P. Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Leningrad.

Kolosov’s principal works have dealt with the morphology of the autonomic nervous system, and he has discovered and described various forms of visceral receptors. He established the presence of special receptor endings in the neurons of autonomic ganglia, showing that, along with efferent neural pathways, there are afferent paths from the receptors of the autonomic neuron of the nodal stroma to the central nervous system. Kolosov has been awarded the Order of Lenin and various medals.