Mykola Amosov

Mykola Amosov

Mykola Amosov (December 6, 1913, Cherepovets, Russian Empire – December 12, 2002, Kiev, Ukraine) was an Ukrainian doctor, heart surgeon, inventor, known for his inventions of several surgical procedures for treating heart defects.

He was the recipient of multiple Orders including two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Patriotic War, and two Orders of the Red Star. In 2008 he was recognized as second to Yaroslav I the Wise of the Great Ukrainians by a public opinion in the TV show The Greatest Ukrainians.

Nikolai Amosov was born December 6, 1913. in the village Olkhovo of Vologda province. In 1939 he graduated from the Arkhangelsk Medical Institute. From 1947 to 1952 he worked as chief surgeon of the Bryansk region and at that time he began to be widely engaged in thoracic surgery, he conducted extensive scientific work and in 1953 he presented his doctoral dissertation.

In 1952, Amosov, as a prominent specialist in thoracic surgery, was invited to the Kiev Institute of Tuberculosis, to guide specially created clinic of thoracic surgery.

Amosov was one of the initiators of the widespread introduction into our country surgery for diseases of the lungs, has made a lot of new developments in this problem. His research contributed to improving the treatment of diseases of the lungs. In 1961, Amosov for lung surgery was awarded Lenin Prize for the work of lung surgery.

In the future, the main focus of Amosov’s work was the heart surgery. In 1955 he was the first in Ukraine began treatment for heart diseases surgically, in 1958, one was one of the first in the Soviet Union to introduce into the practice the method of artificial blood circulation (in 1963), Amosov was first in the Soviet Union to perform the mitral valve replacement, and in 1965 for the first time in the world he created and introduced into practice the antithrombotic heart valves prosthethesis.

Amosov elaborated a number of new methods of surgical treatment of heart lesions, the original model of heart-lung machine. In 1983 Amosov’s cardiac surgery clinic was reorganized in Kiev Research Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery and in the Ukrainian Republican cardiovascular surgical center. Each year, the institute fulfilled about 3000 heart operations, including over 1500 - with extracorporeal blood circulation.

Along with surgery Amosov paid much attention to contemporary problems of biological, medical and psychological cybernetics. From 1959 to 1990 he headed the Department of Biological Cybernetics in the Institute of Cybernetics. Nikolay Amosov is widely known as a writer. His novels “The thoughts and heart”, “Notes from the Future”, “The Book of Happiness and misery”; have been repeatedly published in this country and abroad.

Amosov marked by many high governmental awards of the USSR and of Ukraine. He was a talented, bright, versatile man, a brilliant surgeon, scientist and public figure. In 2003 the Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine was named after Academician Nikolai Mikhailovich Amosov.