Pavlovskii, Evgenii Nikanorovich

Born Feb. 22 (Mar. 5), 1884, in Biriuch, present-day Krasnogvardeisk, Voronezh Oblast; died May 27, 1965, in Leningrad. Soviet zoologist and parasitologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939) and the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944); honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the Tadzhik SSR (1951). Hero of Socialist Labor (1964); lieutenant general in the medical corps. Became a member of the CPSU in 1940.

In 1908, Pavlovskii graduated from the Military-Medical Academy in St. Petersburg. He became a professor at the academy in 1921. He worked at the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine in Leningrad from 1933 to 1944 and at the Tadzhik branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1937 to 1951. Pavlovskii was the director of the Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1942 to 1962. He became head of the department of parasitology and medical zoology of the Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR in 1946. From 1952 to 1964 he was the president of the Geographical Society of the USSR.

Pavlovskii’s principal works were devoted to parasitology. Numerous multipurpose expeditions to Middle Asia, Transcaucasia, the Crimea, the Far East, and other regions of the USSR were organized under his leadership to study endemic parasitic and transmissible diseases, including tick typhus, Russian tick-borne encephalitis, pappataci fever, and leishmaniasis. Pavlovskii developed the theory of natural geographical foci of human diseases. His theory served as the basis for the establishment of a number of prophylactic measures and, together with the work of V. A. Dogel’, promoted the development of an ecological school of parasitology. Pavlovskii studied parasite bi-ocenosis, many problems of regional and topographical parasitology, the developmental cycles of a number of parasites, and the pathogenesis of helminthic infestations. Pavlovskii and his associates studied bloodsucking flying insects and methods of controlling them; they also studied poisonous animals and the properties of their poisons.

Pavlovskii wrote a number of textbooks and manuals of parasitology. He was a deputy to the second, third, and fourth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1941 and 1950, the Lenin Prize in 1965, the I. I. Mechnikov Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1949, and the Great Gold Medal of the Geographic Society of the USSR in 1954. Pavlovskii also received five Orders of Lenin, four other orders, and various medals.