Bogomolets, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich

Born May 12 (24), 1881, in Kiev; died there July 19, 1946. Soviet pathophysiologist and public figure. Academician (1932) and vice president (1942) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1929), the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR (1939), and the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944). Honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR (1944). Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1935) and Hero of Socialist Labor (1944).

Bogomolets graduated from Novorossiia University in Odessa in 1906. He was a professor at the University of Saratov from 1911 to 1925. From 1925 to 1931 he was a professor in the department of medicine at the Second Moscow University and at the same time (1928–31) director of the Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion. From 1930 to 1946, Bogomolets was president of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR as well as director of the Institute of Experimental Biology and Pathology and Institute of Clinical Physiology (both institutes now bear his name) of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. His works were devoted to the major problems in pathological physiology, endocrinology, the autonomic nervous system, the theory of constitution and diathesis, oncology, physiology and pathology of connective tissue, and gerontology. Bogomolets developed an effective method of acting on connective tissue with antireticular cytotoxic serum (ACS) that was used (1941–45) to hasten the healing of fractures and injured soft tissues. He developed a theory that explains the mechanism of action of blood transfusion by colloidoclastic shock (shock from injury to colloids). He was the initiator and director of research on storage of blood. Bogomolets founded a large school of pathophysiologists. A member of the central executive committees of the Ukrainian SSR and the USSR (from 1931), he was a deputy to the first and second convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He received the State Prize of the USSR in 1941 and was awarded two Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.