Academician Gavriil Abramovich Ilizarov (1921–1992) (on the 100th anniversary of the birth)

Abstract

Professor Gavriil Abramovich Ilizarov was born on June 15, 1921 in the town of Bialowiez in the Bialystok Voivodeship of the Polish Republic. Gavriil was able to go to school only at the age of 11, but his level of education allowed him to pass the exams for the elementary grades, and he was enrolled immediately in the fourth grade. He graduated from the eight-year school with excellent marks and in 1938 continued his studies at the medical faculty in the city of Buinaksk, Dagestan ASSR. In 1939, Gavriil Abramovich entered the Crimean State Medical Institute, after graduating from which in 1944 he worked as a doctor in Polovinskaya and then Kosulinskaya district hospitals of the Kurgan region. At this time, Ilizarov came up with a brilliant idea for the treatment of complex fractures of long tubular bones with the fixation of their fragments with a special metal controlled device instead of blind and static plaster immobilization. In 1955, G. A. Ilizarov was appointed head of the Traumatological and Orthopedic department of the Kurgan Regional Hospital for the Disabled of the Great Patriotic War, where he began to apply his invention. The first official scientific recognition of G. A. Ilizarov received his dissertation «Transosseous compression osteosynthesis by the author’s apparatus (experimental and clinical study)» in September 1968 in Perm. In 1966, on the basis of the 2nd city hospital of Kurgan, the problem laboratory of the Sverdlovsk Research Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics was organized, the head of which was Gavriil Abramovich, and in 1969 the laboratory was transformed into a branch of the Leningrad Research Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics named after R. L. Vreden and its director was appointed G. A. Ilizarov. Since 1982, the triumphant introduction of the Ilizarov method into the practice of leading foreign countries began, and the press gave the author the enthusiastic title of «Michelangelo in orthopedics». Gavriil Abramovich successfully engaged in public activities, was elected deputy of the district and regional Councils of Workers‘ Deputies, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, People’s Deputy of the USSR. For his great achievements in medical science and outstanding services to the national and world health care, G. A. Ilizarov was awarded the highest state awards, academic and honorary titles of the USSR and many foreign countries. Academician Gavriil Abramovich Ilizarov died suddenly of heart failure on July 24, 1992 in Kurgan and was buried in the central alley of the new Riabkovskое cemetery in Kurgan.