 He first studied art and architecture in Moscow, then, in 1971, joined the department of Psychology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, and in 1976 the same department's graduate school.In 1979 Chingis Izmailov got his PhD in psychology for his development of the spherical model of color space (with E. N. Sokolov as his scientific adviser), in 1985 was awarded his “big doctorate” (доктор наук, a Russian equivalent of the German Habilitation) for his work on color vision mechanisms and models.Chingis Izmailov was a professor at the Lomonosov Moscow State University since 1987, Distinguished Professor since 2005.