Pavel Maksimilianovich Ivanovskii

Born Mar. 10 (22), 1885; died Mar. 2, 1953, in Moscow. One of the founders of school hygiene in the USSR.

Ivanovskii graduated from the physics and mathematics department (natural science division, 1911) and the medical department (1918) of Moscow University. He began his pedagogical activity in 1912. From 1935 he was a docent in the subdepartment of school hygiene of the medical department of Moscow State University; from 1947 to 1953 he was head of that subdepartment and simultaneously dean of the sanitation and hygiene department of the First Moscow Medical Institute. Ivanovskii provided the hygienic basis for the organization of physical education in the schools. He assigned special significance to the proper planning and provision of sanitary services and amenities in children’s institutions; he proposed the city-planning principle of the location of schools, kindergartens, and nurseries within the neighborhood. From 1946 to 1953, at the Institute of School Hygiene and Physical Education of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR, Ivanovskii directed the study of the educational loading of pupils and the elaboration of a rational regimen for the students of different grades. Together with Professor A.V. Mol’kov, he composed the first programs on school hygiene and wrote the first textbooks for physicians and teachers.