Vasily Larionovich Yakimov

YAKIMOV, Vasily Larionovich (born 1870), a well-known protozoologist, one of the pioneers of protozoological research in Russia, the founder of the protozoological school in Soviet veterinary medicine, and the author of a vast number of scientific works in the field of medical and especially veterinary parasitology, hematology, and chemotherapy. After graduating from the Kazan Veterinary Institute, he served as a zemstvo veterinary physician in the Kazan Governorate; then, from 1901 to 1909, he was a scientific researcher in the epizootiological department of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, where he carried out a series of works on the study of trypanosomes and the diseases they cause, proving that trypanosomiasis is widespread among animals not only in tropical countries but also within the borders of the former Russia. From 1909 to 1912, he worked in various foreign institutes and laboratories (Berlin, Frankfurt, Naples, Rome, Paris, Tunis, etc.), studying and perfecting his skills in protozoology and chemotherapy; he was an assistant to Ehrlich, helping the latter in his work on the study of salvarsan. Upon returning to Russia, he organized a large expedition to Turkestan (1913) to study tropical diseases of humans and animals, during which materials of exceptional importance were collected on the pathology of hot countries, in particular on leishmaniasis in humans and dogs, Malta fever, piroplasmosis, etc. From 1914 to 1918, he headed the protozoological department of the veterinary laboratory of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1919, among other individuals, he was an initiator of the organization of the Veterinary Institute in Leningrad, of which he was elected the first director. In 1918, he became a professor at the State Institute of Medical Knowledge in Leningrad. During this same period, he completed a course of medical sciences. At the present time, he is a professor and head of the Department of Parasitology at the Leningrad Veterinary-Zootechnical Institute. Through the works of Yakimov and his numerous students, a vast number of parasitic protozoa in humans and animals have been discovered and studied, and a whole series of diseases previously unknown in our Union have been discovered and investigated for the first time. Exceptional capacity for work, in accordance with his vast scientific erudition, enabled Yakimov to publish about 500 printed scientific works on protozoology, arachnology, chemotherapy, and hematology. Among his individual publications, the following books are particularly well-known among medical and veterinary workers: "Pathogenic Protozoa" (part of the well-known manual "The Study of Microorganisms," published under the editorship of S. I. Zlatogorov, Leningrad, 1924), "Veterinary Chemotherapy" (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930), and "Diseases of Domestic Animals Caused by Protozoa" (Moscow-Leningrad, 1931).