Maria Alexandrovna Sechenova

Maria Alexsandrovna Sechenova (Russian: Mария Aлександровна Cеченова; 1839–1929) was the first female ophthalmologist surgeon from the Russian Empire. She was one of the first women to receive an education from a foreign university and one of the first female doctors in Russia.

Early life Maria Alexsandrovna Sechenova was the daughter of Alexander Afnasevich Obruchev, a landowner of Tver Oblast and a famous army general in Russia. In the mid-1860s, she fell in love and entered a real marriage with I. M. Sechenov.

She was one of the first women to attend lecture in university in 1859. Prior, no woman tried to enter university. After her arranged marriage with Bokov, Sechenova and Nadezhda Suslova, the first Russian female to receive a doctoral degree, began studying at St. Petersburg. Before leaving Europe and returning to Russia, she published the study, “A way to produce artificial color blindness”, under Sechenov's guidance. At the beginning of his novel, Chernyshevsky notes, “... all the essential in my story are facts experiences by my good friends.” (Kirsanov - Sechenov, Vera Pavlovna - Maria Alexandrovna, Lopukhov - Bokov).