Starokadomsky Leonid Mikhailovich
(27.03.(08.04).1875–27.01.1962)

Physician, arctic explorer.
Born in Saratov in the family of a small railway employee. After graduating in 1899 with honors from the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg, he served in the 7th Revel Infantry Regiment and in the Brest-Litovsk Hospital. In 1903, Starokadomsky was transferred to the Navy Department and seconded to the Kronstadt Hospital. Here he suffered a great misfortune - when he opened the corpse, he contracted corpse poison, as a result of which he had his left hand amputated. Despite his disability, Starokadomsky was left in military service.
In 1905, he worked as part of a commission for medical examination of prisoners of war returning from Japan. From the Far East traveled to St. Petersburg by sea. Despite the apparent exposure to seasickness, swimming made a huge positive impression on Starokadomsky.
In 1909, having brilliantly defended his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Medicine, Starokadomsky received and accepted an invitation to the position of the ship's doctor of the icebreaker steamer "Taimyr", which he was preparing together with the icebreaking steamer "Vaigach" for a hydrographic expedition to the Arctic Ocean. He participated in this expedition without interruption from the beginning to the end: from the moment of preparation to the full completion.
From 1910 to 1915, the expedition court under the leadership of the first I.S. Sergeev, and after his leaving due to illness in 1913, B.A. Vilkitsky made five voyages to the Arctic Ocean, making a huge amount of hydrographic observations. In 1913, the expedition made the largest geographical discovery of the 20th century — to the north of the Taimyr Peninsula, an unknown, vast, mountainous land was discovered, which the discoverers called the Land of Nicholas II. The first to notice the unknown land almost simultaneously were the "Taimyr" doctor Starokadomsky and the watch supervisors of the "Vaigach" N.I. Evgenov and K.K. Neupokoev. To the southeast of this land, Starokadomsky discovered another small islet. In 1914 - 1915 the expedition for the first time passed the Northeast passage from east to west.
The constant participant of all campaigns, Starokadomsky enjoyed great respect from all members of the expedition and was for them indisputable authority. Despite the injury, he himself carried out numerous works and managed to do surgical operations with one hand. Numerous scientific and medical duties provided him with a huge workload, but Starokadomsky found more time for regular detailed diary, on the basis of which he later wrote his well-known book “Five voyages in the Arctic Ocean”. During the voyages, he collected significant collections of marine and land animals, as well as plants.
After the expedition ended, Starokadomsky stayed in the North, worked as a doctor on the construction of the Murmansk railway and in Arkhangelsk, where he was one of the founders and teachers of the first national university.
In 1920 he was appointed sanitary inspector of the Naval Forces, for many years he headed the medical service of the fleet. In 1930, after 27 years of military service, Starokadomsky retired, but did not break with the Arctic, participating in sailing the expeditionary ship "Perseus", and in 1932–1934. as a flagship doctor on ships delivering cargo to Kolyma.
Starting from 1936 and almost until his death, Starokadomsky worked in the Central Research Laboratory for Hygiene and Sanitation of Water Transport of the USSR Ministry of Health. He wrote over 130 publications on various issues of water transport hygiene that are of great scientific and applied importance, in particular for the organization of polar expeditions. Starokadomsky owned several foreign languages and translated into Russian a number of scientific publications on special medical issues, collaborated in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Until the end of his life, he maintained contact with his comrades, members of a hydrographic expedition to the Arctic Ocean.

Starokadomsky died in Moscow and was buried at the Vvedensky cemetery next to his son-composer. Stella of rapitaqui granita.
An island in the Laptev Sea southeast of the Bolshevik Island of the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. Named in 1914 by members of a hydrographic expedition to the Arctic Ocean.