Skriabin, Konstantin Ivanovich

Born Nov. 25 (Dec. 7), 1878, in St. Petersburg; died Oct. 17, 1972, in Moscow. Soviet helminthologist; founder of helminthology in the USSR. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939), the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935), and the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944); Hero of Socialist Labor (1958).

Skriabin graduated from the Iur’ev (Tartu) Veterinary Institute in 1905, after which he worked as a veterinarian in Middle Asia until 1911. He was a professor at the Don Veterinary Institute in the city of Novocherkassk from 1917 to 1920. In 1920 he became a professor at the Moscow Veterinary Institute (now the Moscow Veterinary Academy). Beginning in 1920 he was also head of the helminthology department of the State Institute of Experimental Veterinary Science (from 1931, the All-Union Insitute of Helminthology). From 1921 through 1949, Skriabin was head of the helminthology department of the Tropical Institute (now the E. I. Martsinovskii Institute of Medical Parasitology and Tropical Medicine). In 1942 he became head of the helminthology laboratory of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was chairman of the Presidium of the Kirghiz branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1943 to 1952 and vice-president of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences from 1956 to 1961.

Skriabin’s investigations dealt with helminthological morphology, biology, phylogeny, systematics, ecology, epizootiolo-gy, and epidemiology. Starting in 1919, more than 300 expeditions were conducted under Skriabin’s leadership and often with his direct participation. The expeditions were very significant in the study of the fauna of helminths that infest man and the domestic and wild animals of the USSR and in the development of systematic health measures in medicine and veterinary medicine. Skriabin discovered and described more than 200 new species and fully substantiated 120 new genera of helminths. He introduced new scientific concepts of supplementary and accumulative hosts, transitory parasitism and symbiotic parasitism, biohelminthiasis, and geohelminthiasis. Skriabin advanced the principles of the dehelminthization and devastation of the sources of infection, which serve as the bases for the control of helminthiases in man, farm animals, and plants.

In 1922, Skriabin founded a permanent commission for the study of the fauna of the helminths of Russia (since 1940, the All-Union Society of Helminthologists of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR). He was a member of many foreign academies, including those in France, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, as well as an honorary member of many scientific societies, for example, those in the USA, Great Britain, Belgium, and India. He was a deputy to the second and third convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The All-Union Institute of Helminthology, the Moscow Veterinary Academy, and the Kirghiz Agricultural Institute were named in honor of Skriabin. In 1973 a gold medal was instituted in honor of K. I. Skriabin, which is awarded by the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences for outstanding scientific work or discoveries in the field of veterinary science. Skriabin received the State Prize of the USSR in 1941 and 1950 and the Lenin Prize in 1957. He was awarded six Orders of Lenin, four other orders, and various medals.