Zinaida Vissarionovna ErmolEva

Born Oct. 12 (24), 1898, in the city of Frolovo. Soviet microbiologist and bacteriochemist. Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1965; corresponding member, 1945). Honored Scientific Worker of the RSFSR (1970).

In 1921, Ermol’eva began working in the Northern Caucasus Bacteriological Institute, and in 1925, in the A. N. Bakh Biochemical Institute of the People’s Commissariat for Public Health of the USSR and in the Ail-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine. From 1947 to 1954 she worked at the Institute of Antibiotics of the Ministry of Public Health of the USSR. In 1952 she began working at the Central Institute for the Advanced Training of Physicians. Her principal works are on the study of cholera and on antibiotics. She studied and introduced into practice in 1931 the medicinal preparation lysozyme. She obtained the first samples of Soviet-made antibiotics penicillin (1942) and streptomycin (1947) and developed the Soviet antibiotics interferon, ekmonovocillin, Bicillins, ekmolin, and dipasfen. A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR (1943), she has been awarded two Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.