Sergei Nikolaevich Muromtsev

Born May 14 (26), 1898, in the village of Makkaveevo, Riazan’ Province; died Dec. 14, 1960, in Moscow. Soviet microbiologist; academician of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1948). Member of the CPSU from 1940.

Muromtsev graduated from the Moscow State University department of medicine in 1923 and then worked in several Moscow research organizations. In 1931 he helped to organize the State Bureau for the Control of Veterinary Biological Preparations in the USSR. He became director of the N. F. Gamaleia Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR in 1956. His principal works dealt with general medical and veterinary microbiology, specifically, the use of bacteriophage to prevent and treat infectious diseases. Muromtsev proposed a rapid method of diagnosing rabies in animals, methods of growing pathogenic anaerobes with free access to air, and methods of preparing semiliquid vaccines against a number of infectious animal diseases. In his scientific work, Muromtsev typically combined the advances in medical and agricultural microbiology. He used and introduced into microbiological research the data of physics, biology, and physical and colloid chemistry. A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR (1946), he was awarded four orders and various medals.