Nikolai Sergeyevich Korotkov (also romanized Korotkoff; ) ( – 14 March 1920) was a Russian Empire surgeon, a pioneer of 20th-century vascular surgery, and the inventor of auscultatory technique for blood pressure measurement. Biography Nikolai Korotkov was born to a merchant family at 40 Milenskaia Street in Kursk on February 26, 1874. He attended the Kursk Gymnasium (secondary school). He entered the medical faculty of Kharkiv University in 1893 and transferred to Moscow University in 1895, where he graduated with distinction in 1898. He was appointed resident intern to professor Alexander Bobrov at the surgical clinic of Moscow University. Korotkov was given leave of absence to serve with the Russian military forces in the Far East during the Boxer Rebellion in China 1900. He was attached to the Red Cross in the Iversh Community under Aleksinskii (a pupil of prof. Bobrov). The journey to the Far East entailed extensive travel by way of the Trans-Siberian railroad, through Irkutsk to Vladivostok and he returned to Moscow via Japan, Singapore, Ceylon and the Suez Canal to reach the Black Sea and Feodosiya. Korotkov was honoured with the Order of St. Anna for "outstandingly zealous labours in helping the sick and wounded soldiers". On his return Nikolai Korotkov turned his mind from military to academic pursuits and translated Eduard Albert's monograph "Die Chirurgische Diagnostik" from German to Russian. In 1903, Sergey Fedorov was appointed professor of surgery at the Military Medical Academy at St Petersburg, and he invited Korotkov to join him as assistant surgeon. During the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905, Korotkov went to Harbin in Manchuria as senior surgeon in charge of the Second St George's Unit of the Red Cross. He became interested in vascular surgery and began to collect cases for his doctoral thesis, which included 41 of 44 case reports of patients who were part of his war experience in the hospital at Harbin. Returning to St Petersburg in April 1905 he began to prepare his thesis, but it was a presentation to the Imperial Military Medical Academy in 1905 that earned him lasting fame. The technique of blood pressure measurement was reported in less than a page (only 281 words) of the "Izvestie Imp. Voiennomedicinskoi Akademii" (Reports of the Imperial Military Medical Academy): The critical comments of Korotkov's peers were dealt with in an adroit manner, and he appeared a month later at the Imperial Military Academy with