Ishoq Musaboyev

Ishoq (Isak) Qurbonovich Musaboyev was born on 22 October 1910 in the village of Naukent (Novkat), in what is now Fergana Region. He entered the Samarkand Medical Institute in 1930, graduated in 1935 and stayed on at its department of infectious diseases, first as a postgraduate and then as an assistant.

When the Second World War reached the Soviet Union, he was called up in December 1941. He served as an epidemiologist and then head of the sanitary service of the 92nd Separate Rifle Brigade, formed from natives of Central Asia, and later ran the infectious-disease ward of a military hospital. In 1942 he defended his candidate dissertation on blood transfusion in typhoid and paratyphoid fevers. In 1944, at the request of the Uzbek government, he was demobilised and returned to the Samarkand Medical Institute; that year he received the title Honoured Physician of the Uzbek SSR.

In Samarkand he was a docent in 1944–1949 and from 1949 to 1951 headed the department of infectious diseases while also serving as chief physician of the city infectious-disease hospital. In 1951 he defended his doctoral dissertation on liver function in typhoid and paratyphoid fevers, and in 1952 he became a professor.

In 1951 Musaboyev moved to Tashkent and took charge of the department of infectious diseases at the Institute for Advanced Training of Physicians, which he led until 1988 and where he then remained a scientific consultant. From 1962 to 1970 he was deputy director for research of the Uzbek Research Institute of Epidemiology, Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, and is counted among its principal organisers.

His research dealt with the course, clinical picture, treatment and prevention of intestinal infections. He proposed classifications of the clinical forms of dysentery, cholera and viral hepatitis, and also worked on diphtheria, typhoid-paratyphoid diseases and Q fever. In 1965 he took part in the response to a cholera outbreak in Karakalpakstan, and that year he was given the title Honoured Worker of Science and Technology of the Karakalpak ASSR.

He was named Honoured Scientist of the Uzbek SSR in 1955, was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences in 1961 and a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR in 1966, and in 1990 became a laureate of the Beruni State Prize. His decorations include the Order of Lenin (1966), the Order of the October Revolution (1980), three Orders of the Red Banner of Labour, the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class, and the Badge of Honour.

He died in Tashkent on 28 December 2003 and was buried at the Yalangach-2 cemetery.