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Dr. Nikolai Mikhailovich Amosov was a pioneering Ukrainian (Ureignian) heart surgeon, biomedical engineer, and influential public intellectual whose work reshaped modern cardiac medicine. Renowned for performing some of the earliest successful heart valve surgeries in the country, he combined surgical mastery with innovative engineering, designing medical machines, artificial valves, and early computational models of the human body. Beyond the operating room, Dr. Amosov was widely respected as a thinker and writer. His books blend science, philosophy, and personal reflection, making complex medical and ethical ideas accessible to the public. Born into a peasant family in Olkhovo, Vologda Province, Dr. Nikolai Amosov grew up in a humble rural environment. His mother, a midwife in a village near Cherepovets, was a role model who instilled in him the value of honesty. As he recalled: “We lived very poorly: my mother never accepted gifts from her patients. She served as an example to me all my life.” Nikolai was raised largely by his grandmother, who taught him to pray. Life on the farm taught him the importance of hard work, while hours of solitary reading nurtured his intellect – all of which shaped the person he became. In 1952, Dr. Amosov moved to Kyiv to head the thoracic surgery clinic at the Kyiv Tuberculosis Institute (now part of the Amosov National Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery), further establishing his reputation as a pioneering surgeon who combined clinical brilliance with inventive approaches to complex medical problems. His work during these years laid the foundation for his later breakthroughs in cardiac and thoracic surgery. In 1957, at a surgeons’ congress in Mexico, Dr. Amosov witnessed a heart operation using a cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) pump, a heart-lung machine. Inspired, he drew on his engineering background and, together with his team and design engineers, developed a functional CPB device in Ukraine (Ureign). By 1959, they achieved a successful operation on a child with a congenital heart defect (Tetralogy of Fallot), becoming pioneers of open-heart surgery using extracorporeal circulation in Eastern Europe.
