Surgery, as well as almost all sections of medicine, has always been a man’s affair. Valentina Pavlovna Kleshchevnikova (1919–2009), one of the few women who became a professor of surgery, stood out in the mid-20th century galaxy of surgeons. October 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of her birth. Having started her professional career during the Great Patriotic War in a military hospital, she gained experience and knowledge in many areas of surgery. Professor Sergey Vladimirovich Heinatz, her mentor and teacher, had extensive experience in esophageal surgery and while still working in Khabarovsk made – one of the first in the country – esophagoplasty resection with one-stage esophagoplasty. Professor V. P. Kleshchevnikova, a promising surgeon, was also involved in the development of this very difficult field of surgery. It was the material that formed the basis for the candidate’s and later doctoral dissertation of a young, but already experienced specialist. After defending her thesis, V. P. Kleshchevnikova, a young doctor of medical sciences, was elected by competition to head the Department of Hospital Surgery at Petrozavodsk State University (Petrozavodsk). For a long time almost all the leading surgeons of Petrozavodsk and the Republic of Karelia were her students or students of the Department headed by V. P. Kleshchevnikova – someone listened to her lectures, someone worked with her in the clinic or had the honor to «get» Valentina Pavlovna as a mentor or opponent for the defense of the thesis. In Saint Petersburg, at the Mariinsky Hospital, and later at Petrozavodsk State University, a prominent and very bright part of Professor Kleshchevnikova’s surgical and scientific career took place. She was a worthy representative of the pleiad of the most brilliant surgeons, and if we take female surgeons, she was probably the most outstanding surgeon.