The article reflects the history of the Department of Operative Surgery and Topographic Anatomy of the Yaroslavl State Medical University from 1952 to 1974. A permanent team of employees was formed under the leadership of Professor Tatyana Arsenievna Zaitseva, a front-line surgeon. Experimental operations on the esophagus, lungs, heart, and stomach were actively mastered by the staff. Surgery on great vessels and transplantation of extremities have become an important area of research. Replantation issues were developed with the involvement of specialists from various theoretical and clinical departments. One of the country’s first interregional team of angiological surgeons was formed. The tasks of the department included the issues of improving teaching methods, providing the educational process with visual aids: cadaveric material, films based on the materials of the scientific work of the department. At the same time the anatomical museum was expanding. The student scientific circle worked actively, the members of which replenished the teaching staff of the department and the university. Young scientific and pedagogical cadres were brought up, later they became outstanding scientists. E.P. Tsvetov, I.A. Ponomareva, Yu.V. Novikov, V.V. Shilkin, Yu.A. Davydov worked at the department. Later they took the position of heads of departments. Some of the department employees linked their lives with practical health care and became heads of large scientific laboratories or heads of departments (professors V.I. Saveliev, N.K. Minachenko, N.V. Protsenko). The facts of their biographies, memoirs of contemporaries illuminate little-known pages of the history of the formation of the teaching staff of the department. In 1971, T.A. Zaitseva was awarded the Order of Lenin by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for many years of impeccable work in training medical personnel. In 1974, the department was headed by Professor Yu.V. Novikov. From 1977 to 2007 Yu.V. Novikov, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, headed the university.