Background

Nikolay Burdenko was born on May 22 (Old Style June 3), 1876, in the village of Kamenka in the Nizhnelomovsky Uyezd of the Penza Governorate (now Kamenka, Kamensky District, Penza Oblast of Russia), one of the eight children of Nil Karpovich Burdenko and Varvara Markianovna Smagina. The Burdenko family had been serf peasants, which was more or less equivalent to the status of a slave in Imperial Russia.

Education

Until 1885, Burdenko studied at Kamenka zemstvo school. From 1886 to 1890 he studied at Penza theological school (currently, the Dental Faculty of the medical institute of Penza State University is located there) and from 1891 to 1897 was a student of Penza Orthodox Theological Seminary.

In 1897 Nikolay Burdenko entered the Tomsk University Medical School, transferring in 1901 to the Yuriev University (Tartu) Medical School, from which he graduated in 1906. As a student, he was greatly influenced by the ideas of Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov and the works of Pavlov. In 1903 he joined V. G. Tsego Manteifel’s surgical clinic. In 1909, after presenting his doctoral thesis "Materialy k voprosu o posledstviakh perevyazki venae portae" ("Data on the Effects of Dressing the Venae Portae"), he was employed in laboratories, clinics, hospitals, and libraries in Germany and Switzerland. He learned the surgical methods of August Bier, O. Hildebrandt, F. Krause, and Hermann Oppenheim. Under Constantin von Monakow, in Zurich, he studied anatomy and the histology of the central nervous system and neurological surgery.

Career

After 1910 he held the chair of an assistant professor of surgery at Yuriev University and became an adjunct professor of surgery and anatomy. After the death of Tsego Manteifel, in 1917, he was a professor ordinarius at the school’s surgical clinic. From 1918 to 1923 he headed the Voronezh Medical Institute’s surgical clinic and in 1923 he was appointed to the chair of anatomy and surgery at the Moscow State University Institute. From 1924 to the end of his life he devoted himself to organizing the clinic’s neurological department. After 1929 he was a director of the neurological clinic of the Health Ministry’s roentgenology institute; this was the precursor of the Central Neurosurgical Institute (founded in 1934), which is today the Burdenko Neurosurgical Institute of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Medical Sciences. Burdenko further made use of his experiences in three wars (the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, and World War II) to lay the basis for Soviet military field surgery.

Burdenko wrote more than 300 articles on clinical and theoretical medicine. His earliest clinicoexperimental research was concerned with the physiology of the liver, the duodenum, the stomach, and the pancreas; his later work deals with a wide variety of problems in anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, histology, and pathology. He was a pioneer of Soviet neurosurgery (and especially of an important school of surgery that is marked by its readiness to experiment) and the teacher of the first generation of Soviet neurosurgeons. He made contributions to the oncology of the central nervous system; and the vegetative nervous system; to the pathology and circulation of the blood and the fluids, edema, and swelling of the brain; and to the operative treatment of various serious conditions of the nervous system.

In 1939 the 64-year-old Burdenko joined the Winter War and spent all four months at the frontline, managing the battlefield surgery. With the start of the Great Patriotic War in 1941, he was appointed the Main Surgeon of the Red Army and participated in some of the first battles that took place near Yartsevo and Vyazma. He organized medical help and personally operated thousands of people. He also tested and actively applied first antibiotics - benzylpenicillin and gramicidin - to treat injury infections.

Burdenko held many honorary posts. After 1939 he was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the U.S.S.R. College of Surgeons and after 1937, Chairman of the Medical Sciences Council of the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Health. He was the first president of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Medical Sciences, editor of Sovremennaya khirurgiya from 1944 to 1946, editor of Neirokhirurgia, and a member of the editorial board of Khirurgiya and Voenno-meditsinskii zhurnal.

Achievements

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  Nikolay Burdenko is remembered as the founder of Russian neurosurgery. He was a recognized specialist in his field and held membership of a number of honorable professional associations. He also was one of the first to practice the bulbotomy - operation on the upper division of the spinal cord. The following were named after Burdenko: SRI of the neurosurgery in Moscow, Central military hospital, the faculty of the surgical clinic of Sechenov's medical academy, Penza provincial clinical hospital, streets in Moscow and Voronezh, an asteroid (6754 Burdenko).

Politics

In 1939, Burdenko joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Membership

Nikolay Nilovich Burdenko was an honorary member of the International Society of Surgeons, the British Royal Society of Surgeons, and the Paris Academy of Surgeons. From 1939, he was an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

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  International Society of Surgeons

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  USSR Academy of Sciences

Connections

Nikolay Burdenko was married to Maria Emilievna Burdenko.They had one son, Vladimir Nikolaevich Burdenko.

Father:

Nil Karpovich Burdenko

Nil Karpovich Burdenko worked as an estate manager for the major general Vladimir Voeykov, who served in the Svita of Nicholas II and was close to the Emperor's family.

Mother:

Varvara Markianovna Burdenko (Smagina)

Varvara Markianovna Burdenko (Smagina) was a housewife, who came from peasants of the Tambov Governorate.

Grandfather:

Karp Fyodorovich Burdenko

Karp Fyodorovich Burdenko served as a landlord's estate manager.

Wife:

Maria Emilievna Burdenko

Son:

Vladimir Nikolaevich Burdenko

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography