Uktam Aripov

Uktam Aripov was born on 3 January 1927 in the Jizzakh district, then part of the Samarkand Region, into a family of an office employee. In 1948 he graduated with distinction from the Samarkand State Medical Institute and stayed on there: he was a clinical resident, then assistant (1950), docent (1956) and professor (1964), headed the department of general surgery, and served as dean of the medical faculty and vice-rector for academic affairs.

He defended his candidate’s dissertation in 1953 and his doctoral dissertation in 1963. In 1964 he was appointed first deputy minister of health of the Uzbek SSR, a post he held until 1971. That year he became rector of the Tashkent Medical Institute, which he led until 1984.

In 1971 Aripov set up a problem research laboratory at the institute to overcome tissue incompatibility in organ and tissue transplantation. According to biographical reference works, the laboratory produced anti-lymphocyte serum and globulin from donkey blood, which were used in kidney transplants. On 14 September 1972 he performed the first kidney transplant operation in Tashkent.

In 1983 he and his colleagues received the Beruni State Prize of the Uzbek SSR for introducing new treatments for chronic kidney failure into clinical practice and for creating immunosuppressive drugs. Under his guidance a method of transplanting pancreatic islet cells from karakul sheep, used in type 1 diabetes, was also developed.

From 1984 to 1997 he headed the department of hospital surgery, and from 1991 he led the Ministry of Health’s scientific specialised centre for hepatopancreatobiliary surgery. Twenty-six doctoral and 65 candidate dissertations were defended under his supervision; he wrote about 500 scientific works, 16 monographs and three textbooks.

He was named Honoured Science Worker of the Uzbek SSR in 1967, elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR in 1974, and became a member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001. He died in Tashkent on 14 December 2001 and was buried in the Minor cemetery. In August 2025 he was posthumously awarded the Order «For Selfless Service» by presidential decree.