Vasilii Vasilevich Parin

Parin, Vasilii Vasil’evich

 

Born Mar. 5 (18), 1903, in Kazan; died June 15, 1971, in Moscow. Soviet physiologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1966) and the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944). Member of the CPSU from 1939.

A student of A. F. Samoilov, Parin graduated from the medical department of the University of Perm’ in 1925 and remained to work there. Between 1932 and 1941 he was head of the sub-department of physiology, dean, deputy rector, and rector of the Sverdlovsk Medical Institute. From 1941 to 1943 he was a professor at the First Moscow Medical Institute, and from 1942 to 1945 deputy people’s commissar of public health of the USSR. Parin was a founder, the first academician-secretary, and, from 1963 to 1966, vice-president of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR. He was director of the Institute of Normal and Pathological Physiology of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR from 1960 to 1965, director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Ministry of Public Health of the USSR from 1965 to 1969, and head of the Laboratory for Problems of Directing the Physiology of Humans and Animals of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1969 to 1971.

Parin’s principal research concerned the normal and pathological physiology of blood circulation, the use of principles of cybernetics and new technology in physiology and medicine, and problems of space biology and medicine. Parin performed classic research on the reflex regulation of pulmonary blood circulation and discovered one of the mechanisms that regulates the return flow of blood to the heart (Parin’s reflex). He participated in organizing and conducting medical and physiological experiments aboard spacecraft.

Parin was a member of the International Academy of Astronautics from 1964 and an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the Socialist Republic of Rumania, the Czechoslovakian Medical Society, Charles University in Prague, and other foreign societies and universities. He was awarded the Order of Lenin, three other orders, and various medals.

WORKS

Izbrannye trudy, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1974.

REFERENCES

”Akademik V. V. Parin” (obituary). Uspekhi fiziologicheskikh nauk, 1971, vol. 2, issue 2, pp. 126–27.
Kositskii, G. “Akademik V. V. Parin.” Nauka i zhizn’, 1971, no. 11.
Chernigovskii, V. N. “Akademik Vasilii Vasil’evich Parin (1903–1971).” Fiziologicheskii zhurnal SSSR, 1972, vol. 58, no. 6, pp. 805–10.

K. A. LANGE