History of the Academy

I.M. Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy

Historical Background

The I.M. Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy (MMA) is the oldest medical school in Russia. Founded in 1758 as the faculty of medicine of the Imperial Moscow University, the Academy is its direct legal successor. After a reform of higher medical education in 1930 the faculty was reorganised into a self-governing body – the First Moscow Medical Institute. From 1955 the Institute bears the name of Ivan M. Sechenov, the outstanding Russian scientist. In 1990 the institute was renamed into a medical academy.

Over a span of almost 250 years MMA has become the major centre of medical science and training of medical and pharmaceutical personnel in Russia. Since then has trained tens of thousands of highly qualified physicians and other medical personnel. Many of them left their names in the history of national and world medicine. It was home of 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 academy 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.