Extract
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds Albert Einstein
When in 1996 the world’s famous cardiac surgeon Michael DeBakey visited Moscow to participate in coronary artery bypass grafting on Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin, his first question was ‘May I pay the last honours to Professor Demikhov?’ there were two errors in his short sentence—not only had Demikhov never been awarded a Professorship, but he was alive and living in a very small apartment on the outskirts of Moscow.
Sadly, DeBakey received no answer… , nobody knew who Demikhov was.
Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov (1916–1998) was born on 18 July 1916 in the village of Yarizhenskaya in Russia’s Volgograd region into a family of peasants. His father was killed in 1919 during the Russian civil war and his mother, being minimally educated, put all her energy and time into efforts to provide a higher education for all three of her children.
