Yevgeniy Ivanovich Chazov (Russian: Евгений Иванович Чазов; 10 June 1929 – 12 November 2021) was a physician of the Soviet Union and Russia, specializing in cardiology, Chief of the Fourth Directorate of the Ministry of Health of the USSR, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, a recipient of numerous awards and decorations, Soviet, Russian, and foreign. He was a graduate of Kiev Medical Institute.

As the Chief of the Fourth Directorate of the Soviet Ministry of Health, which took care of Soviet leaders, he is widely regarded to be a person responsible for the health of the Soviet leadership, although he sometimes denied that he was their "personal physician".

In his book of memoirs, Health and Power he described many circumstances concerning the health of the Soviet leaders and of some leaders of the Soviet satellites.

Chazov was the director of the Moscow Cardiological Center since 1976. It is one of the largest such centers in the world, comprising 10 separate institutes.

Nobel Peace Prize

Yevgeniy Chazov was a co-founder and co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Charged with promoting research on the probable medical, psychological, and biospheric effects of nuclear war, the group was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on 10 December 1985. On the occasion of the award, Chazov gave the acceptance speech in Oslo. At that time the group represented more than 135,000 members from 41 countries. Many groups protested the decision to include Chazov, and alleged that Chazov was responsible for some of the Soviet abuses of psychiatry and medicine and for attacks against a 1975 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the physicist and Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov.

Personal life

Chazov was married three times. He had two daughters, Tatyana and Irina, from the first and second marriage, respectively.