The paper gives an account of the scientific-and-practical activity of the prominent Soviet physiologist V. V. Streltsov, Head of the Fourth Sector, Research Sanitary Institute, and the initiator of the Aviation Medicine Institute. He was a brilliant experimenter, innovator, organizer of unique researches who developed the physiological aspects of high altitude, speedy, night and instrumental blind flights, the problems of stratospheric aviation. He made the first experimental ascent in the altitude chamber. He was one of the first aviation physicians who made a parachute jump. He was the first inflight medical investigator who tested the on-board oxygen equipment in group cross-country flight on the closed route Moscow-Kharkov-Moscow.