Today we will tell the story of another employee of the IEE RAS that participated in the Great Patriotic War.
Konstantin Minaevich Ryzhikov was born on September 26, 1912 in Smolensk. In 1937 he graduated from the natural sciences department of the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute, in 1938 he entered the graduate school of the Institute of Biology of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR. In the first days of the war he was mobilized into the Red Army. He began his service as a private, then received the rank of senior sergeant and sergeant major.
Until 1942 he served in a front-line military warehouse, then was transferred to the front, where he served until the end of the war as part of the 1031st rifle regiment. During the crossing of the Dnieper in 1943 he was wounded, participated in the capture of Berlin.
K.M. Ryzhikov was awarded government awards, including: the Order of the Red Star (1943), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1972, 1975), the Order of Friendship of Peoples (1982), the Order of Cyril and Methodius 1st degree (Bulgaria, 1971), the Medal "For Military Merit" (1943), the Medal "For the Capture of Berlin" (1945), the Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" (1945), "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" (1965), "Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" (1975), "60 Years of the USSR Armed Forces" (1978), Gregor Mendel Gold Medal of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (1982), Marin Stoyanov Drinov Medal of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1982); Prize of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1949), Academician K.I. Scriabin Prize of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences (posthumously, 1984 - for a series of works on the topic "Helminths of Birds of the Fauna of the USSR").
In 1948, he defended his candidate's dissertation, the results of which were published in the first issue of the multi-volume series "Fundamentals of Nematodology", the dissertation was awarded the Prize of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
In 1963, Konstantin Minaevich defended his doctoral dissertation "Study of the fauna, taxonomy and biology of helminths of domestic and game birds and research on reservoir parasitism in helminths".
In 1973-1983, he was the director of the Helminthological Laboratory of the USSR Academy of Sciences, editor-in-chief of the journal "Parasitology" from 1974 to 1983.
Author of more than 200 works, including 8 monographs. He was the leader and organizer of many expeditions and all-Union and international conferences, congresses and symposia. Member of many scientific helminthological and parasitological societies, was a member of the editorial boards of many parasitological journals, including international ones. He worked as Deputy Academician Secretary of the Department of General Biology of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1964–1983), was Chairman of the All-Union Society of Helminthologists, a member of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Education of the USSR, headed the helminthological section of the Scientific Council of the Department of General Biology of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the problem of "Biological Foundations of Development, Reconstruction, and Protection of the Animal World".