Nikolai Nikolaevich Petrov

Born Dec. 2 (14), 1876, in St. Petersburg; died Mar. 2, 1964, in Leningrad. Soviet surgeon and oncologist, one of the founders of Soviet oncology. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939) and Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944). Hero of Socialist Labor (1957).

Petrov graduated from the Military Medical Academy in 1899. In 1912 and 1913 he was a professor at the hospital surgical clinic of Warsaw University. From 1913 to 1958 he was head of the subdepartment of surgery at the Institute for the Advanced Training of Physicians, and simultaneously, from 1921 to 1925, he was head of the subdepartment of stationary surgery at the First Leningrad Medical Institute. In 1926 he organized and became head of the Leningrad Oncological Institute (since 1966 the Petrov Leningrad Oncological Institute).

Petrov was primarily concerned with experimental, theoretical, and clinical oncology and the prevention of cancerous diseases. He conducted research on transplants of embryonic tissue and on the production of malignant tumors in monkeys. He worked on the polyetiological theory of the origin and development of malignant tumors and a combined method of treating tumors. He wrote the first (1910) comprehensive Russian-language work on oncology. He was also the author and editor of the classical work Malignant Tumors (vols. 1-3, 1947-62) and of a number of works on transplantation, the treatment of wounds, the surgical treatment of tuberculosis and gastric and duodenal ulcers, and medical deontology.

Petrov created a school of oncological surgeons. He was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1963, the State Prize of the USSR in 1942, and the I. I. Mechnikov Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1953. He was an honorary member of the International Society of Surgery (from 1957). He received three Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.