Fedor Grigorevich Krotkov

Born Feb. 16 (28), 1896, in the village of Mosolovo, in present-day Shilovo Raion, Riazan’ Oblast. Soviet hygienist; one of the founders of military and radiation hygiene in the USSR. Academician (1944) and vice-president (1953–57) of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor (1966), major general of the medical service. Member of the CPSU since 1919.

Krotkov graduated from the Military Medical Academy in 1926. He was head of the subdepartment of military hygiene of the academy from 1931 to 1935, of the I. P. Pavlov Institute of Aviation Medicine from 1935 to 1937, and of the Institute of Nutrition of the Red Army from 1944 to 1946. He was deputy minister of public health of the USSR from 1946 to 1947 and simultaneously (from 1937 to 1957) head of the subdepartment of military hygiene of the Central Institute for the Advanced Training of Physicians. During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 he was director (1941–44) of the hygiene service of the Soviet Army. In 1957 he organized and became the director of the first subdepartment of radiation hygiene in the USSR (at the Central Institute for the Advanced Training of Physicians).

Krotkov’s principal work deals with general, military, and radiation hygiene and the hygiene of nutrition. Krotkov’s mono-graph^ Manual of Military Hygiene (1933; 2nd ed., 1939) is the most complete work in the field. Krotkov inspired a major school of hygienists. He was awarded three Orders of Lenin, an Order of the October Revolution, five other orders, and various medals.