History of the Sector

It has begun in 1844 as a Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology created at the Department of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow University. Its founder and the first keeper was Prof. Ivan Timofeevich Glebov, a disciple of Prof. Gregory I. Fischer von Waldheim. In 1849, the collections of the Cabinet were systematized, and by that time they numbered 2,100 preparations. Subsequently, the collections of the Cabinet were kept by Nikolai Alexandrovich Varnek (1850-1870), Yakov Andreevich Borzenkov (1870-1883).

After the death of Ya.A. Borzenkov, the Cabinet was headed by Mikhail Alexandrovich Menzbier. He transformed the Cabinet into the Institute and Museum of Comparative Anatomy, where many outstanding specialists worked: P.P. Sushkin, V.N. Lvov, A.N. Severtsov, and others. At that time, the Cabinet was located in a small building in Dolgorukvosky (now Nikitsky) Lane, where the "anatomical wing" of the Zoological Museum building is now situated.

M.A. Menzbier headed the Institute of Comparative Anatomy until 1911, when a number of prominent professors, including Menzbier, resigned from the University in protest against the actions of the police in quelling student riots and against the violation of the autonomy of the higher school by the Minister of Education L.A. Kasso. The vacant place at the Institute of Comparative Anatomy became occupied by A.N. Severtsov, who successfully developed his evolutionary morphological school here.

In 1930, the Institute of Comparative Anatomy was removed to the Academy of Sciences, while its  Museum was retained in the University, and it was headed by Boris Stepanovich Matveev, who also became the head of the Department of Vertebrate Comparative Anatomy at the newly formed Faculty of Biology. In 1931, the Museum of Comparative Anatomy became a part of the Zoological Museum to be transformed into a Department of Phylogeny in 1932, which nearly corresponded to the modern Sector of Evolutionary Morphology. From 1939 to 1941, the Department was headed by A.N. Druzhinin. In the period from 1941 to 1969, D.N. Hoffman worked in the Department and was in charge of it for a long time, completed it with a large collection of bird embryos. Later, the Department/Sector was headed by V.A. Dolgov (in 1972-1978), E.D. Vasilyeva, A.N. Kuznetsov, A.A. Lisovsky (in 2001-2021).