Petrova, Mariia

Born Mar. 25 (Apr. 6), 1874, in Tbilisi; died May 14, 1948, in Leningrad. Soviet physiologist. Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1945). A student and co-worker of I. P. Pavlov from 1910 to 1936.

Petrova graduated from the St. Petersburg Women’s Medical Institute in 1908 and until 1931 worked at the institute’s clinic. Beginning in 1910, she first worked at the Institute for Experimental Medicine and then at the I. P. Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; in 1946 she became head of a laboratory at the latter institute. From 1935 to 1944 she was also a professor and head of the subdepartment of the physiology and pathophysiology of higher nervous activity at the Leningrad Institute for the Advanced Training of Physicians.

Petrova’s principal works were devoted to the physiology and pathology of higher nervous activity and the study of experimental neuroses caused by overstrain and by the interaction of excitation and inhibition in the cerebral cortex and the dependence of these processes on the animal’s type of nervous system. Petrova established the dependence of skin and other diseases on pathological states of the cerebral cortex in animals. She also wrote a number of works on the treatment of neuroses with bromine salts.

Petrova was awarded the I. P. Pavlov Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1940 and the State Prize of the USSR in 1946. She received the Order of the Badge of Honor and various medals.