Petr Georgievich Kornev

Born Dec. 2 (14), 1883, in Samara Province, present-day Kuibyshev Oblast. Soviet surgeon. Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944); Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1940). One of the pioneers of the theory of surgical tuberculosis (the tuberculosis of bones and joints). Kornev graduated from Moscow University in 1908. From 1921 to 1935 he was a docent at the surgical tuberculosis clinic of the First Leningrad Medical Institute. Simultaneously, from 1930 to 1960, he was director of the Leningrad Institute of Surgical Tuberculosis, which he had founded in 1919. From 1939 to 1966 he was head of the subdepartment of surgical tuberculosis at the Leningrad Institute for the Advanced Training of Physicians.

Kornev established the paramount role of primary osteitides in the pathogenesis and evolution of the tuberculosis of bones and joints and developed a classification of the disease. He proposed a number of new surgical methods, such as necrectomy of periarticular foci and economical arthrectomy, and proposed and perfected a number of surgical instruments and apparatus. He inspired a school of specialists in surgical tuberculosis.

Kornev is an honorary member of the All-Union Society of Phthisiologists and the All-Union Society of Surgeons and a member of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and the International Association of Surgeons. He has received the State Prize of the USSR (1952) and the Lenin Prize (1965) and has been awarded three orders.