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Alexandr Myasnikov, MD

1899 — 1965

Academician Aleksandr Myasnikov was a leading Russian cardiologist who gave early support to cardiovascular epidemiology and prevention in the USSR. He had worked in Leningrad before and during the World War II, been in contact with Nikolai Anitschkov, and thereby became interested in the relationship between diet and atherosclerosis. In 1948 Myasnikov was appointed Director of the Institute of Therapy of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow, where the research was first directed to experimental pathology of diet and drug effects on atherosclerosis.

Myasnikov visited the United States in the 1950s where he met Paul D. White and Ancel Keys, and invited them to Moscow in 1961. These contacts stimulated epidemiological studies in the USSR, when Myasnikov delegated his doctoral student, Igor Glasunov, to initiate observational studies in the field.

To commemorate his outstanding work, the Institute of Therapy was named in 1967 the Myasnikov Research Institute of Clinical Cardiology. Its Department of Cardiovascular Epidemiology, planned by Myasnikov before his death, actively continues as the Center of Preventive Medicine. (KP/HB)

Sources

Henry Blackburn and Kalevi Pyorala