Dmitriev, Leonid Borisovic Prof. Dr. med. Taken from an obituary notice by S. Taptapova, Ann. Bull. UEP 5 (1987), 66 Leonid B. Dmitriev was born on January 12, 1917, into a family of medics. Upon graduating from the Moscow Medical Institute in 1941, he joined the medical staff of the 5th Soviet Moscow Hospital-, where he worked as a surgeon during World War Two. Not long before the end of the war he took up a post-graduate course at the Institute of Physical Culture, specializing in the therapeutic physical training. A year later he continued his post-graduate course at the Morphology Institute of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, where he was working on his thesis on general anatomy. While a post-graduate student, he was at the same time an assistant at the general anatomy faculty at the 2nd Moscow Medical Institute. It was here that he started to study human vocal mechanism.
		His interest in this field dated back to 1940 when he entered the Gnesin’s Musical College to study singing. Upon graduating as a singer and vocal teacher, he became a lecturer at the same College on the following subjects: „The Basics of Vocal Methods“, „History of Vocal Pedagogics“, „Phonetics, Phoniatrics and Singer’s Vocal Hygiene“. Besides, he gave lessons in solo singing and rendered scientific assistance to students in their diploma projects and to post-graduated in their theses. For six years, he had been lecturing-on „The Basics of Vocal Methods“ in the Moscow Conservatoire. For his textbook „The Basics of Vocal Methods“ (510 pp.) he had received a scientific degree of Doctor of Arts. He was a scientific adviser on 13 Master’s and one Doctor’s theses. He was a founder and head of a Laboratory on Physiology of Phonation and Vocal Methods at the Gnesin’s Musical College. He carried out a number of experimental works and wrote a lot of articles, monographs, and study aids on topical problems of vocal training and singing voice. The list of his scientific papers comprises about 60 titles. Among his works are: Master’s Thesis - („X-Ray Study of the Structure and Adaptation of Singer’s Vocal Mechanism“, 228 pp), Atlas - („Singer’s Vocal Mechanism“, 228 pp), Textbook - („The Basics of Vocal Methods“, 510 pp). These and other works made his name known to the vocal public and the outstanding scientists both at home and abroad. Prof. Dmitriev took an active part in public activities. For a number of years, he was a Presidium Member of the Research Council on Vocal Training at the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, presided over the conferences on vocal education as well as headed a research-and-methods council of the Nezhdanova vocal section at the All-Russia Theatrical Society. He was also Chairman of the phoniatrics department at the Moscow Research Otorhinolaryngological Society and Board Member of the Union of European Phoniatricians. L.B. Dmitriev died on July 15, 1986.