Outstanding representative of Kazan scientific school of ophthalmology: professor V.V. Chirkovsky (dedicated to the 140th anniversary of his birth)

Article is devoted to the jubilee of V.V. Chirkovsky, who headed the Department of Ophthalmology of the Kazan University from 1922 to 1929, and was a rector of the University from 1923 to 1925. He was also the director of the wWorld’s first Trachoma Research Institute named after E.V. Adamyuk (Kazan). The article outlines his outstanding organizational skills, resulting in creating ophthalmologic departments and scientific schools of ophthalmology in Tomsk, Irkutsk, Perm, Kazan and Leningrad (Saint Peterburg). During his work in Kazan, V.V. Chirkovsky was elected as a rector of the Kazan University, in this position he served until 1925. He led the university during a harsh period: the country experienced economic collapse, university professors led a beggarly life, but he managed to preserve the two most important faculties of the university - medical and physic-mathematical, and to keep the professors of the university. The creation of Trachoma Research Institute allowed not only to strengthen the fight against trachoma in Tatarstan, but also to completely eliminate it in our and neighboring regions (Republic of Mari El, Bashkortostan, Udmurtia, etc.). In 1929 professor V.V. Chirkovsky moved to Leningrad, where he headed the Department of Ophthalmology of the 1st Leningrad Medical Institute and headed the Leningrad Research Institute of Ophthalmology named after Girschman until 1952. During his active life, professor V.V. Chirkovsky authored about 100 scientific papers on various aspects of ophthalmology. His main publications were related to the study of trachoma, the disease that he has defeated.