Konstantin Skryabin

SKRYABIN, Konstantin Ivanovich (born 1878), an outstanding parasitologist, Honored Worker of Science, and creator of the Soviet helminthological school. After graduating from the Yuryev Veterinary Institute (1905), Skryabin worked until 1911 as a district and municipal veterinary surgeon in Chimkent and Aulie-Ata (present-day Kazakhstan). Directing special attention from the very first steps of his activity to invasion diseases, predominantly helminthic diseases of animals, Skryabin collected extensive helminthological material in Central Asia and processed it in 1911–14 in Germany, France, and Switzerland, working in the laboratories of Max Braun, Lühe, Railliet, and Fuhrmann, the leading European helminthologists of that time. In 1917, Skryabin was elected professor to Russia's first department of parasitology, newly established at the Don Veterinary Institute (Novocherkassk). Since 1920, Skryabin has been working in Moscow. Only after the October Revolution did Skryabin receive the opportunity to fully develop as a researcher, organizer, and educator. Skryabin is the founder of the USSR's first veterinary (1917) and medical (1921) research helminthological institutions, and the organizer and permanent chairman (since 1922) of the Permanent Commission for the Study of the Helminth Fauna of the USSR under the Zoological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He also organized the parasitological laboratory at the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of the 1st Moscow State University (1923). The activity of Skryabin, known far beyond the borders of the USSR and having elevated Soviet helminthology to one of the foremost places in the world, encompasses a wide range of purely scientific and scientific-practical questions of medical, veterinary, and general helminthology. In his main scientific works (the total number of Skryabin's works exceeds 300), Skryabin elucidates mainly the distribution, morphology, systematics, and geography of individual forms and groups of parasitic worms from the standpoint of evolutionary theory and ecological features. Skryabin developed and for the first time applied on a broad scale his "Method of complete helminthological dissections of vertebrates, including man" (published by the 1st Moscow State University, Moscow, 1928). This method opens wide prospects in the study of a number of biological questions (phylogeny, animal communities, parasite-host relationships); it has made it possible to significantly enrich, refine, and systematize information on the helminth fauna of man and animals in the USSR. Under Skryabin's leadership and that of his closest disciples, about 140 helminthological expeditions have been conducted across the USSR since 1919 (including a number of specially medical ones), which played a major role in organizing the fight against helminthic invasions. The overwhelming majority of Soviet helminthologists scattered throughout the Union are disciples of Skryabin.

Skryabin is currently the head of the helminthiasis control sector at the State Tropical Institute of the People's Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR (Moscow), director of the All-Union Institute of Helminthology of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR (attached to the institute is the largest Central Helminthological Museum, consisting predominantly of expeditionary collections of Skryabin and his collaborators), professor at the Moscow Veterinary Institute, member of the Scientific Veterinary Council at the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR, USSR representative in the Permanent Commission for Convening International Veterinary Congresses, and co-editor of the Great Medical Encyclopedia. Together with Prof. E. I. Martsinovsky, Skryabin founded the "Russian Journal of Tropical Medicine" (1922), which has been published since 1932 under the title "Medical Parasitology and Parasitic Diseases" (Skryabin is deputy editor-in-chief). In 1932, he was elected an honorary doctor of the University of Tartu (formerly Yuryev-Dorpat) and an honorary member of the American Society of Parasitologists in Washington (USA). Among Soviet physicians, a major manual compiled by Skryabin together with R. Ed. S. Schulz, "Human Helminthoses" (parts 1–2, Moscow–Leningrad, 1929–31), has gained great renown. Under his editorship and with his participation as an author, a series of monographs on animal helminthoses entitled "Library of Helminthology" has been published since 1928; to date, 15 books have been published, including on helminthic invasions of sheep (2 editions), dogs and pigs, and on trichostrongylidoses of ruminants.