Institute of Obstetrics and Gynecology

of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, a scientific-research institute dealing with problems of human obstetrics and gynecology. Located in Leningrad, it was founded in St. Petersburg in 1797 on the initiative of N. M. Ambodik-Maksimovich under the name of Clinical Midwifery Institute.

The institute was important in the development of obstetrics and gynecology in Russia. After the October Revolution it became a scientific institute of the People’s Commissariat on Health of the RSFSR, directing organizational, methodological, scientific, and medical work in safeguarding the health of mother and child. In 1948 it entered the system of institutions of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR. The institute has obstetric, gynecological, and endocrinologic divisions; laboratories; and a polyclinic. The prominent Russian scholars N. I. Pirogov, D. O. Ott, V. V. Stroganov, K. P. Ulezko-Stroganova, and others have worked there. The major scientific subject of the institute is the prenatal protection of the fetus and the prevention of perinatal fetal mortality. The institute has postgraduate courses and the right to accept the defenses of master’s and doctoral dissertations; it publishes scientific works and monographs.