Grashchenkov, Nikolai

Born Mar. 13 (26), 1901, in the village of Zabor’e, in present-day Khi-slavichi Raion, Smolensk Oblast; died Oct. 8. 1965, in Moscow. Soviet neurologist; corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939). academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR (1947: president, 1947–51). and academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944). Member of the CPSU since 1918.

Grashchenkov graduated from the medical department of Moscow University in 1926. Beginning in the early I930’s he directed a number of medical scientific research institutions. From 1937 to 1939 he was the first deputy of the People’s Commissariat of Public Health of the USSR. His main work was in the physiology and pathology of the sensory organs, the pathology of the diencephalon, electrophysiology. and the traumatic and infectious diseases (for example, tick-borne and mosquito encephalitides) of the central nervous system. He studied and described in detail gas gangrene of the brain and proposed complex methods for the treatment of gunshot wounds to the vertebral column. He was deputy general director of the World Health Organization from 1959 to 1961. He was awarded the Order of Lenin, three other orders, and medals.