Nikolai Vereshchagin

Short abstract

Neurologist who introduced computed tomography to the former Soviet Union

Professor Nikolai Viktorovich Vereshchagin pioneered the use of computed tomography in the Soviet Union to study neurological disorders (especially stroke). In 1979, when he was deputy director of the Institute of Neurology at the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, he installed there a computed tomographic scanner made by the British company EMI, the first such scanner in the country. However, this equipment was too expensive to be used in routine clinical practice. Vereshchagin's idea was to make a cheaper Soviet version. Hundreds of copies were manufactured in Kiev in the 1980s and early 1990s (some of which were exported, including to India), and Vereshchagin and a group of engineers were awarded a State prize for their creation. However, compared with its Western counterparts, this equipment was unreliable and the quality of images was poor. Nikolai Vereshchagin went on to become director of the Institute of Neurology for 18 years.

Born in 1922, Vereshchagin served with the Red Army during the second world war. After qualifying he specialised in neurology, but was increasingly drawn to an administrative career, becoming, in 1965, head of the human resources department of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the Soviet Union. For almost 10 years (1966-75) Vereshchagin worked in the central committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as an instructor in the department for science and education institutions. However, being an apparatchik he continued to hold an honorary position as senior researcher at the Institute of Neurology.

In August 1991 he was said to have been summoned to “diagnose” Mikhail Gorbachev during an attempted coup d'état. However, Vereshchagin quickly realised that Gorbachev's “disease” might be of a political rather than a medical nature and he avoided participation in the plot. Some of his neurological colleagues accused him of “unpatriotic behaviour.”

He leaves a wife, Alexandra Konstantinovna; a daughter; and a granddaughter.

Nikolai Vereshchagin, former neurologist Moscow (b Moscow 1922; q Moscow 1952; MD), d 11 October 2004.