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Bìol. Tvarin. 2020; 22(1): 53–56.
https://doi.org/10.15407/animbiol22.01.053
Received 19.11.2019 ▪ Accepted 22.03.2020 ▪ Published online 01.05.2020

Mykola Hamaliya, an outstanding microbiologist and epidemiologist (to the 160^th anniversary of the birthday)

Poltava State Agrarian Academy,
1/3 Skovorody str., Poltava, 36003, Ukraine

The brief biographical essay in honor of the 160^th anniversary of the birth of Mykola Fedorovych Hamaliya, an outstanding Ukrainian microbiologist, epidemiologist, hygienist and health care organizer who organized the second bacteriological station in the world for vaccination against rabies. He was born on February 17, 1859 in Odesa in the family of a retired Guards Officer Fedir Mykhailovych Hamaliya. Mykola was the 12^th child in the family, which belonged to an old cossak family. Grandfather Mykhailo Leontovych Hamaliya was a doctor who was the first in Tsarist Russia to publish the results of his research on anthrax. One of his ancestors, Hryhoriy Vysotsky, served with Bohdan Khmelnytsky, was his ambassador in Turkey, where he got the nickname “Hamalia”, which in Turkish meant “mighty”. Mykola Hamaliya graduated from the University in Odesa in 1880 and the Academy of Military Medicine in St. Petersburg in 1883. In 1883, Hamaliya returned to his native Odesa. He began to study the bacteriology of tuberculosis and anthrax in Odesa. In 1886 he worked in Paris with L. Pasteur. Studying vaccination against rabies, he improved on Pasteur’s method of prophylactic inoculations. In 1886 M. F. Hamaliya, I. I. Mechnikov and Y. Yu. Bardah organized a bacteriological station in Odesa for vaccination against rabies. Mykola Hamaliya identified the main measure of the fight against plague — the extermination of rats. He developed vaccination against typhus and tuberculosis. Mykola Hamaliya made a significant scientific contribution to the development of the doctrine of desinfection, he introduced the term “desinsection” into the language. Hamaliya initiated global vaccination for smallpox.

Key words: Mykola Fedorovych Hamaliya, history of microbiology, epidemiology and hygiene

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