Sergei Yudin (surgeon)

Sergei Sergeevich Yudin (1891 to 1954) was a Russian surgeon, born in Moscow into the family of a factory owner. He began medical studies at the University of Moscow in 1911 and was called up as a junior army doctor in 1914, was wounded three times in the First World War and received the Cross of St. George for bravery. His book on spinal anesthesia won a prize of the All-Soviet Surgical Society, and a six month trip to the United States in 1926 produced a detailed series of letters on American surgery. From 1928 he chaired the surgical department of the Sklifosovsky Institute in Moscow, where in 1930 he successfully transfused cadaveric blood for the first time and organized what is described as the first blood bank. In the Second World War he served as surgeon-in-chief to the army and received honorary fellowships from the American College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Surgeons. He was arrested by the KGB in 1948, held without trial and exiled to Siberia, and returned to Moscow only after Stalin died in 1953. He died of a heart attack in 1954.