Feofil Yanovsky

Feofil Yanovsky was born on 24 June 1860 in the village of Minkivtsi in Podillia. In Kyiv he graduated with a gold medal from the Third Gymnasium (1878) and from the medical faculty of St Volodymyr University (1883). He began practising on Andriyivskyy Descent, and from 1882 to 1917 worked at the Oleksandrivska Hospital, chairing its scientific council.

In 1886 he set up Kyiv’s first bacteriological laboratory for diagnosing tuberculosis and later laid the foundations of a network of TB sanatoriums. He was a professor at Kyiv University (1905–1919), headed the therapy department of the Kyiv Medical Institute (1921–1928) and was elected to the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1927. Regarded as the founder of the Kyiv school of internal medicine, he was revered by Kyivans as a selfless doctor — the “saintly doctor”.

From 1903 until his death he lived at 13-B Yaroslaviv Val, next door to the Sikorsky family estate; a bronze plaque (1972) marks the house. He died on 8 July 1928 and is buried at Lukianivske Cemetery. The National Institute of Phthisiology and Pulmonology bears his name, with a monument outside since 1992, and since 2021 so does a street in the Solomianskyi district.