Professor Simon (Semyon) Skurkovich, M.D., Ph.D., Sc.D. (med) – pioneering immunologist, researcher, inventor, and composer – passed away on June 4, 2017 at his home in Rockville, MD, USA. He was born on December 16, 1922 in Maliat – a small town outside Vilna, Lithuania, the fourth of 6 children. When he was five years old, he moved to Moscow. His family that was so poor that he was placed in a government orphanage together with his older brother. While in the orphanage, he taught himself how to play piano and other musical instruments and was considered a musical prodigy and a wunderkind.  After graduating from high school, he seriously considered becoming a professional musician and composer but went to medical school instead. In 1941, he participated, as a civilian, in the defense of Moscow from advancing German troops for which he received a special medal. His medical school had to evacuate to Izhevsk in Siberia until 1943. He then returned to Moscow where he graduated with an MD degree at the age of 22. Shortly after, he went to the war front as a captain in a heavy tank regiment of the Soviet Army. With his regiment, he participated in the liberation of Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and other countries from the Nazis and ended the war in Austria where he became a chief physician of the Soviet garrison of Vienna. He served on the front lines as a medical officer and witnessed death and destruction, was wounded twice, and was once left for dead.  In Austria, together with his unit, Skurkovich helped free prisoners of a concentration camp where he witnessed true horrors of the Holocaust. These scenes and the victims that he saw left him with deep emotional scars that never healed.

In 1948, after demobilization from the army, Skurkovich returned to Moscow and started working at the Central Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion as a junior researcher. Shortly after that, he married Dr. Meni Goldfarb with whom he had two children and who predeceased him in 1996. He met with Sergey Prokofiev, one of the most important composers of the 20^th century, who advised him to dedicate himself to music full time. However, due to social circumstances, Skurkovich decided to concentrate on science.  In a very short time, he became a Ph.D. and then a Doctor of Medical Sciences (a higher doctorate) and a Full Professor and chief of the Laboratory of Immunology at the same Institute (now Hematological Scientific Centre). His scientific career spanned six decades and resulted in pioneering work in the treatment of childhood leukemia, development of hyperimmune preparations for the treatment of life-threatening infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Escherichia coli, as well as tetanus and smallpox, and the role of cytokines in general (and interferon in particular) in the development of autoimmune diseases. He was the first to propose, in 1973, that cytokines play critical role in the functioning of the immune system and that dysregulation in their synthesis and function would lead to diseases of immune system. As a logical continuation of his work, he produced antibodies to interferon and performed first clinical trials of these antibodies in human patients with autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, with excellent results. His work opened a new era in the treatment of autoimmune diseases and he became the father of anticytokine therapy that is being used around the world today.

In 1978, Skurkovich decided to emigrate from the Soviet Union and, soon after filing his exit application, he lost his job and all his scientific posts. In 1979, he arrived in the United States and was invited to work at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda because of his outstanding scientific achievements. After working at NIH for a number of years, Skurkovich decided to open his own company to concentrate on development of preparations for the treatment of autoimmune diseases. He performed multiple clinical studies of antibodies to gamma interferon for the treatment of a variety of autoimmune conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, corneal transplant rejection, type I diabetes, psoriasis, alopecia areata, vitiligo, acne, dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa, and others.  In majority of cases, clinical results were very positive.

Simon Skurkovich authored more than 300 scientific publications, 2 books, and more than 43 US and foreign patents. He published his last article, Prevention of Cancer in Healthy People, in 2016, at the age of 93. Unfortunately, he did not achieve financial success with his therapeutic preparations, in part because his business partners were less than scrupulous.

Through all these years, Skurkovich was actively involved in music as well. In 1977, at the height of Jewish revival in the Soviet Union, his concerto for piano and orchestra, which contained a number of well-known Jewish themes, was performed in Moscow to enthusiastic public and critical acclaim. The performance was attended by a number of “refuzeniks” – dissidents, who were denied their right to emigrate to Israel and were harassed by authorities. Over the past twenty years, Skurkovich has worked on composing “Holocaust” – a symphonic poem for orchestra, chorus and soloists that was performed in December of 2016 by the Rhode Island College symphony orchestra and chorus with the author in attendance. This was his way to help us never forget this atrocity and to honor the memory of those who perished and those who fought to survive.

Over his lifetime, Simon Skurkovich received numerous awards and honorary degrees including gold and silver medals for scientific achievements in the USSR and commendations from President Obama. His work on hyperimmune preparations received State Prize of USSR. In 2015, on the 70^th anniversary of the end of WWII, in the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., Skurkovich was presented with one of Russia’s highest awards, The Order of Friendship, for his contributions to science and people of the world.

Simon Skurkovich is survived by his son, Dr. Boris Skurkovich, 4 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. His daughter, Dr. Ellen Millstein, died in 2008.