Pyotr Kurkin

KURKIN, Pyotr Ivanovich (born 1858), one of the founders of Russian sanitary statistics. He graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Petersburg University (1882) and the Medical Faculty of Moscow University (1886). Kurkin spent the first years of his medical practice in Mozhaysk and Serpukhov uyezds of Moscow Governorate as a district Zemsky doctor. In 1891, he was elected by the Moscow Governorate Sanitary Council as the sanitary doctor of Kolomna, Podolsk, and Serpukhov uyezds. With the organization of the medical-statistical department in the governorate sanitary bureau in 1895, he took charge of it and directed its work for 30 years. On Kurkin's initiative, a permanent statistical commission was organized under the former Pirogov Society, in which Kurkin conducted responsible work (as a member and its chairman) to unify the methodology of local work on the statistical study of the sanitary state of the population in the former Zemsky gubernias. From 1899, Kurkin carried out extensive work in the Pirogov Society, serving first as a member of the revision commission, and from 1904 as a board member while fulfilling the duties of board secretary, treasurer, and editor of the journal Obshchestvenny Vrach (The Public Physician). Kurkin took a very active part in organizing the Russian department at the Dresden Hygiene Exhibition (1911), where his sanitary-statistical works were awarded an "honorary diploma." At the All-Russian Hygiene Exhibition (1913), Kurkin's works were also awarded an honorary diploma. From 1918, Kurkin served as a consultant to the Central Statistical Bureau and the People's Commissariat of Health. Before the revolution, Kurkin lectured on sanitary statistics in courses for sanitary doctors, in the courses of the "Society for the Fight against Infant Mortality," and at the former Shanyavsky University; later (1921–25), he lectured in various courses organized by the Central Statistical Bureau, the People's Commissariat of Health, and the Moscow Health Department. For his services in the field of public health, Kurkin was awarded the title of Honored Worker of Science in 1928. Kurkin authored over 80 works devoted to issues of defining and assessing the sanitary state, the methodology of sanitary-statistical research, the popularization of socio-hygienic knowledge, and educational issues in sanitary statistics. Among these works, the most important are: Statistics of Population Movement in Moscow Governorate in 1883–1897 (Moscow, 1902); Infant Mortality in Moscow Governorate and Its Uyezds in 1883–1897 (Moscow, 1902); Statistics of Population Morbidity in Moscow Governorate for the Period 1883–1902 (vols. I–IV, Moscow, 1907); Zemsky Sanitary Statistics (an essay in systematic bibliography, Moscow, 1904); Sanitary-Statistical Tables (a collection of diagrams with explanatory text, Moscow, 1910; 2nd ed., fasc. 1–2, Moscow, 1925); Sanitary Statistics as a Method of Studying the Sanitary State of the Population (in the book Social Hygiene, edited by A. V. Molkov, fasc. 1, Moscow–Leningrad, 1927); Statistics of Population Morbidity in the USSR (in the book by G. Whipple and S. Novoselsky, Fundamentals of Demographic and Sanitary Statistics, Moscow–Leningrad, 1929); Physical Development of the Worker (Moscow, 1925).