On October 24, a postcard with a commemorative stamp dedicated to the 125th Birth Anniversary of Zinaida Ermolyeva, a microbiologist, an epidemiologist, a creator of antibiotics in the USSR, was put into postal circulation

Zinaida Ermolyeva (1898-1974) was a Soviet microbiologist and epidemiologist, a Full Member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, a creator of antibiotics in the USSR, an Honored Scientist of the RSFSR, a Winner of the Stalin Prize, first grade, for the development of a new method of rapid diagnostics and phagoprophylaxis of an infectious disease.

She was born on October 12 (24) of 1898 on farmstead Frolov (currently the town of Frolovo, Volgograd Region). In 1915, she graduated with a gold medal from the Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium in Novocherkassk and entered the medical faculty of the Don University.

From 1925, she headed the Department of Microbial Biochemistry at the Biochemical Institute under the People's Commissariat for Health of the RSFSR in Moscow. In 1939, Ermolyeva was sent on a mission to Afghanistan, where she invented a drug whose effectiveness during the cholera epidemic, as well as diphtheria and typhoid fever was so high that she was advanced to a professorship for the creation of this drug.

In 1942, she received penicillin for the first time in the USSR and took an active part in the organization of its industrial production in the country. This saved hundreds of thousands of lives of Soviet soldier during the Great Patriotic War. In 1942, when Stalingrad became a front-line station for evacuees, Ermolyeva was sent to the city to prevent the population from cholera; she launched the production of cholera bacteriophage and about 50,000 people received it daily.

In 1945-1947, she was the Director of the Institute of Biological Prophylaxis of Infections. In 1947, on the basis of this Institute, the All-Union Research Institute of Penicillin (afterwards the All-Union Research Institute of Antibiotics) was founded where she headed the Department of Experimental Therapy.

At the same time, from 1952 until the end of her life, she headed the Department of Microbiology and the Laboratory of New Antibiotics at the Central Institute for Advanced Medical Education (currently, the Russian Medical Academy of Continuous Professional Education).

She is the author of more than 500 scientific papers and 6 monographs. About 180 theses, including 34 doctoral dissertations, were prepared and defended under her supervision.

The commemorative stamp provides a portrait of Zinaida Ermolyeva and a schematic of benzylpenicillin of her invention; the main image features Zinaida Ermolyeva at work.

In addition to the issue of the postcard with a commemorative stamp, JSC Marka produced special cancels for Moscow, Volgograd and Rostov-on-Don.


Design Artist: R. Komsa.
Quantity: 6 thousand cards.

« back