Konstantin Tretiakoff

Konstantin Nikolaevitch Tretiakoff was a Russian neuropathologist. He was born in Fergana, Uzbekistan, as a son of military physician, who was member of Pierre Bonvalot's first Pamir expedition. He studied medicine in L'Assistance Publique des Hopitaux de Paris. He received his doctorate in 1919. In his thesis, he described degeneration of the substantia nigra associated with paralysis agitans. Tretiakof was first to link this anatomic structure with parkinsonism. Between 1922 and 1926 Tretiakoff worked at the Hospício de Juquery, near the city of São Paulo, Brazil. In 1931, he was appointed Chairman at the new Department of Neuropathology at the Medical Institute in Saratov, USSR, where he spent the rest of his life.