Soviet cosmonaut and first physician to fly into space. Born in Moscow to one of the Soviet Union’s leading brain surgeons, he decided at an early age to go into medical research and entered the First Moscow Medical Institute, where he chose aviation and space medicine as a speciality. He worked in several medical research institutes before being trained for his first space flight aboard Voskhod 1 in 1964; it was the seventh manned Soviet space flight, the first with more than one cosmonaut, and the first with a trained scientist. The flight lasted 24 hours, during which Yegorov observed the cosmonaut’s reactions to microgravity and drew blood samples. He also experimented with fruit flies and plants. Before he died of a heart attack at the age of 57, Yegorov received his nation’s highest decorations, including the gold star of the Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin.