Gavriil Ilizarov
Soviet physician and inventor (1921-1992)
Gavriil Abramovich Ilizarov (Russian: Гаврии́л Абра́мович Илиза́ров; 15 June 1921 – 24 July 1992) was a Soviet physician, known for inventing the Ilizarov apparatus for lengthening limb bones and for the method of surgery named after him, the Ilizarov surgery.
Life and work
Ilizarov was born the eldest of six children to a poor Jewish family in Białowieża, Białystok Voivodeship, Republic of Poland.
In 1928, the family moved to the parents of his father in the town of Qusar in Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, near Qırmızı Qəsəbə. His father, Abram Ilizarov, was a Mountain Jew from Qusar, while his mother, Golda Ilizarova, was of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. In 1939, he graduated from Buynaksk Medical Rabfak, an educational establishment set up to prepare workers and peasants for higher education, and he entered the Crimean Medical Institute in Simferopol. After the outbreak of the German–Soviet War in 1941, the school was evacuated to Kyzylorda in Kazakhstan.
After finishing school in 1944, Ilizarov was sent to a rural hospital in Dolgovka, a village in Kurgan Oblast in Siberia, 2000 km east of Moscow. In 1950, he obtained a position within a General Surgery Department of the Kurgan Regional Hospital, which included a duty as a surgeon with the air ambulance. In 1955, he became Chief of the Department of Trauma and Orthopaedics in the Regional Hospital for War Veterans in Kurgan.
Bone experiments
Ilizarov's residency was carried out in orthopedic surgery, during which he developed an external fixator system in 1951.
“Gavriil Ilizarov” enters the record as soviet physician and inventor (1921-1992). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gavriil, Ilizarov and Soviet can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q370260. VIAF identifies the subject as 84855903. The Library of Congress control number is n91015421. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921, 1992, 1928 and 1939.
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