Born at St Petersburg on 15 February 1855, the son of Alexander Velyaminov, an officer in the Preobrazhenski Corps, who afterwards served in the Ministries of Roads and Communications and of Finance. He was educated at the Real-Gymnasium at Warsaw, the Nikolaevski Institute at Moscow, and the Physico-mathematical Faculty at Odessa. He graduated in medicine on 14 March 1877 from the New Russian University, Moscow, where he had worked under Professor V Y Storunin and V I Koch, making a special study of the histogenesis of malignant tumours. He was commissioned as an army surgeon and served with the 85th Viborg Regiment of Foot. In 1894 he was appointed to the staff of the Imperial Military Medical Academy at St Petersburg, and became professor of surgery there in 1897. Velyaminov's most permanent contribution to surgery was the founding of the journal which he edited for nearly thirty years, and to which he contributed articles covering a variety of surgical subjects. Beginning in 1885 as the *Surgical Bulletin (Khirurgicheskiy Vestnik)*, it became in 1895 the *Russian Surgical Archives (Russkiy Khirurgicheskiy Arkhiv)*, and in 1910 *Velyaminov's Surgical Archives (Khirurgicheskiy Arkhiv Velyaminova)*. The College possesses the first volume and the series from 1892-1911, one of few sets in Western libraries. Velyaminov contributed three articles to the first volume: "The antiseptic dressing of wounds", "Colotomy", and "Gastrostomy". In the first volume of the new series he published his inaugural lecture on the significance of clinical surgery in general medical education, 1895. He emphasized the need to assimilate and propagate the contributions to modern surgery of Billroth, Volkmann, Lister, Pasteur, and Pirogov. The twenty-fifth anniversary of his graduation was celebrated by a special issue of his journal (vol 18, part 2, 1902), and in 1910 the journal celebrated its own 25th and his 55th birthdays in an issue (vol 26, part 3, pages 483-1062) to which he contributed an historical introduction. Velyaminov married Elisaveta Markvardovna, who died 5 April 1890. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the College in 1909. He died during the revolutionary years following 1917. Principal publications: Observations on clinical surgery: 1. A case of colotomy in cancer of the rectum; 2. Six cases of gastrostomy for cancer of the digestive tract. *Khir Vest* 1885, 1, 87-95 and 366-377. Antiseptic dressing of wounds.*Khir Vest* 1885, 1, 311-365. *Extirpation of the rectum*. St Petersburg, 1889. 70 pages. Contemporary surgery and the significance of its clinical study for the general medical education of the practitioner. *Russ Khir Arkh* 1895, 11, 427-439. *A collection of difficult cases*. Actinotherapy department of the Academy's surgical clinic. St Petersburg, 1902-10. 2 vols. *Classification of diseases of joints*. St Petersburg, 1908. 12 pages. Twenty-five years of the Russian Surgical Archives. *Khir Arkh Velyam* 1910, 26, i-ii. *Joint Disease Clinic: Syphilis of the joints, in 18 lectures*. St Petersburg, 1910. 280 pages, 8 plates.