Vladimir Voiachek

Born Mar. 8 (20), 1876, in St. Petersburg. Soviet otorhinolaryngologist. Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944). Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1933). Hero of Socialist Labor (1961). Lieutenant general in the medical service.

Voiachek graduated from the Academy of Military Medicine in 1899. During the years 1917-56 he was a professor (from 1930, head of a subdepartment), in the period 1919-25, vice-president, and from 1925 to 1930, director of that academy. Voiachek’s principal works deal with the physiology, pathology, and methods of studying the inner ear, sea and air sickness, deafness and dumbness, and speech defects. He proposed a number of new operations, medical instruments, and surgical methods. He developed standards for selecting flight crews for aviation. On Voiachek’s initiative the Leningrad Scientific Research Institute for Diseases of the Ear, Throat, Nose, and Speech Organs was created in 1930. He is the author of several textbooks on otorhinolaryngology, and he created a major school of specialists in this field. In 1935 Voiachek’s name was adopted as part of the title of the Otorhinolaryngological Clinic at the Academy of Military Medicine. He has been awarded five Orders of Lenin, five other orders, and various medals.