Semen Girgolav Soviet surgeon, lieutenant general of the medical service Date of Birth: 14.02.1881

1. Early Life and Education
2. Military Service and Academic Career
3. Scientific Contributions
4. Honors and Recognition
5. Death and Legacy

Early Life and Education

Semen Semenovich Girgolav was born on February 2 [14], 1881 in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Georgia), into a military family. In 1899, he graduated with a silver medal from the 2nd Classical Gymnasium in St. Petersburg and entered the Imperial Military Medical Academy that same year. He graduated with honors in 1904 and became an adjunct to the Department of General Surgery, led by M. S. Subbotin.

Military Service and Academic Career

After graduating in 1904, Girgolav served as a physician in an infantry regiment and in the navy. From 1910, he worked as an assistant and later senior assistant at the Military Medical Academy. From 1919 to 1937, he headed the Department of General Surgery, and from 1937 to 1942 and 1946 to 1957, he led the Department of Hospital Surgery at the academy. From 1932, he was the scientific director of the Leningrad Research Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics.

Girgolav participated in the Russian Civil War, the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, and the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940. During World War II, from 1942 to 1945, he served as deputy chief surgeon of the Red Army. After the war, he became a professor-consultant at the S. M. Kirov Military Medical Academy in 1953.

Scientific Contributions

Semen Girgolav's scientific work focused on traumatology, particularly gunshot wounds and thermal injuries. He published over 140 scientific papers on general, military-field, and thoracic surgery, neurosurgery, surgical endocrinology, oncology, and combuitology. He developed a classification of wounds and participated in the creation of textbooks on general, specific, and military-field surgery, as well as the collective work "Experience of Soviet Medicine in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."

Honors and Recognition

Girgolav was elected a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR in 1944. In 1943, together with T. Ya. Aryev and V. N. Sheinis, he donated the Stalin Prize he received to the Defense Fund.

Death and Legacy

Semen Semenovich Girgolav died on January 25, 1957, and was buried in St. Petersburg at the Bogoslovskoye Cemetery. He is remembered as a distinguished surgeon and a pioneer in the field of traumatology.