Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko

Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko – a Russian and Soviet surgeon, organizer of public health, and the founder of Soviet neurosurgery. Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko was born in the village of Kamenka, Nizhne-Lomovsky Uyezd, Penza Governorate (now the town of Kamenka in Penza Oblast). His father was the son of a serf, worked as a clerk for a small landowner, and later managed a small estate. Burdenko studied at the Kamensk zemstvo school, and from 1886 at the Penza theological school. In 1906 Nikolai Burdenko graduated with honors from Yuryev University. From 1907 he worked as a surgeon, combining clinical practice with scientific research.

 

In 1914 Burdenko voluntarily went to the front in World War I. He reduced mortality and the number of amputations among the wounded by using and developing the methods of surgeon Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov. After a concussion in 1917 he headed the Department of Surgery at Yuryev University. From 1918, while evacuated in Voronezh, Burdenko organized military hospitals, ran specialized courses in military field surgery and established a school for nurses, and was involved in organizing civilian healthcare. Nikolai Burdenko was a pioneer of neurosurgery in Russia and the first surgeon to perform operations on the brain. His innovative research covered a wide range of neurological pathologies, including disorders of cerebrospinal fluid circulation, neoplastic diseases of the central and autonomic nervous systems, cerebrovascular disorders, cerebral edema, and cranio-cerebral trauma. He developed new surgical techniques for treating diseases of the nervous system.

After moving to Moscow in 1923, Burdenko established neurosurgery as a separate medical discipline, and in 1932 founded the world's first Central Neurosurgical Institute. During the Soviet–Finnish and the Great Patriotic Wars, Burdenko directed surgical medical assistance in the Red Army. He wrote nine monographs on military field surgery. Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko died on 11 November 1946 and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery.