History of the University

I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University

Historical Background

I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University (MSMU) is the oldest medical school in Russia. Founded in 1758 as the faculty of medicine of the Imperial Moscow University, MSMU is its direct legal successor. After the reform of higher medical education in 1930 the faculty was reorganised into the First Moscow Medical Institute (in 1990-2010 - Moscow Medical Academy). From 1955 the school bears the name of Ivan M. Sechenov, the outstanding Russian scientist.

Over a span of almost 250 years MSMU has become the major centre of medical science and training of medical and pharmaceutical personnel in Russia. Since then tens of thousands of highly qualified physicians and other medical personnel has been trained there. Many of them inprinted their names in the history of national and world medicine. It was home for such outstanding figures with world fame as: N.I. Pirogov, S.P. Botkin, A.P. Chekhov, I.M. Sechenov, S.G. Zyibelin, G.A. Zakharin, M.Ya. Mudrov, N.V. Sklifosovsky, S.S. Korsakov, N.F. Filatov, V.F. Snegirev, A.A. Ostroumov and many others.

Russian medicine is proud of the fathers of medical scientific schools, such as: A.I.Abrikosov, N.N.Burdenko, N.A.Semashko, P.K. Anokhin, M.P. Konchalovsky, E.M. Tareyev, V.Kh. Vasilenko, P.A. Herzen, N.N. Elansky, L.S. Persianinov.

Many of them are memorised in the names of Moscow streets and lanes: Bolshaya and Malaya Pirogovskaya street, Sechenovsky lane, Rossolimo street, Abrikosov lane, Burdenko street, Yelansky street, and given to medical institutions: the Sklifosovsky Institute, the Martsinovsky Institute, the Myasnikov Institute, the Botkin Hos­pital, the Ostroumov Hospital, the Filatov Hospital, the Rusakov Hospital and many others. There are more than 120 monu­ments and memorial plaques erected in their memory in Moscow alone.

The historic core of the University is the Clinic campus on the Bolshaya Pirogovskaya street, built in 1887-1891. The campus was built on a plot of land granted to the Moscow University faculty of medicine by the City Duma at the Devichye (Maidens) Field, near the Novodevichy Nunnery. It is a unique national medical complex and a monument of late 19th century architecture. In 1897 the delegates of the 12th International Congress of Physicians in Moscow rated the clinics as the best in Europe.