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Ivan (Ivanovich) Speransky, MD

1894 — 1961

Ivan Speransky was a pioneer in CVD prevention research in his role of Deputy Director of the Institute of Therapy in Moscow (called the Myasnikov Institute after Prof. Alexander Myasnikov) dating from the early 1950s. Together with Myasnikov he was responsible for building the Institute as the more important Russian clinical and research center in the field of cardiovascular disease. There he was particularly responsible for its research programs.

Speransky’s personal research focused on hypertension and its mechanisms and he was a mentor of the first CVD epidemiology doctoral thesis by Igor Glasunov on the cross-sectional relation of diet and lipids with coronary disease in the late 1950s.

Speransky came from an aristocratic family, spoke several languages, easily made contact with international scientists, and served as an interpreter to many meetings of them with Myasnikov and colleagues. Most famous of these were the several visits of Paul Dudley White and Ancel Keys as illustrated in this 1961 photograph of a Paul White lecture in Moscow. Speransky and Myasnikov visited White and Keys in the USA in the 1950s and 1960s to discuss the need and strategies for studies of cardiovascular epidemiology in Russia. [I. Glasunov]

Sources

Igor Glasunov

Speransky I.I.1961. “The second international symposium on distribution of coronary disease in various countries of the world.” Cardiologia 2: 91.

Speransky I.I. “Role of nervous factor in hypertonic disease genesis.” 1961.Cardiologia 3: 3-9.

Speransky I.I.. “Achievements of soviet medical science in investigations of cardiovascular diseases.” 1957 Bulletin of the USSR Academy of medical sciences 1: 58-73.