The author earned his medical degree from the elite Medical Military Academy in Leningrad, Russia. He then began a career that included work at the Sverdlovsk Medical Military Institute researching defense against biological weapons. There, Dr. Rumyantsev undertook his Ph. D. studies, followed by doctorate studies at the Hamaleya Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology in Moscow, as well as professorship at the institute of Vaccines and Sera in Saint Petersburg, Russia.