Georgii Speranskii

Born Feb. 7 (19), 1873, in Moscow; died there Jan. 14, 1969. Soviet pediatrician. Participant in the creation of a system of health care for mothers and children. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1943) and academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944). Hero of Socialist Labor (1957).

In 1898, Speranskii graduated from the medical faculty of Moscow University, where he had been a student of N. F. Filatov. In Moscow in 1912 he founded the first nursery for infants, which included a dispensary, a laboratory, a consultation clinic, a room for storing milk, and a day-care center. In 1922 he became director of the institute for the Health Care of Mothers and Children (now the Institute of Pediatrics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR), which was founded by Speranskii and V. P. Lebedeva. From 1931 until 1962, Speranskii was head of the subdepartment of pediatrics at the Central Institute for the Advanced Training of Physicians.

Speranskii’s major works dealt with prenatal and postnatal care, neonatal and infant physiology and pathology, and the feeding, care, and teaching of young children.

Speranskii was chairman of the All-Union Society of Pediatricians from 1938 to 1962. In 1922 he founded and became an editor of the journal Zhurnal po izucheniiu rannego detskogo vozrasta (Journal for the Study of Early Childhood), later called Pediatriia (in 1972, Speranskii’s name was added to the journal’s name). Speranskii also founded a school of thought in pediatrics.

Speranskii was an honorary member of the Czech J. Purkinje Medical Society (1959) and of pediatric societies of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria and the Polish People’s Republic. A recipient of the Lenin Prize (1970), Speranskii was awarded four Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.