He was born in Fergana, Uzbekistan, as a son of military physician, who was member of Pierre Bonvalot's first Pamir expedition.

Between 1922 and 1926 Tretiakoff worked at the Hospício de Juquery, near the city of São Paulo, Brazil.

In 1931, he was appointed Chairman at the new Department of Neuropathology at the Medical Institute in Saratov, USSR, where he spent the rest of his life.

[2] Trétiakoff found them in 1919 in the substantia nigra of PD brains, called them corps de Lewy and is credited with the eponym.

[2] Eliasz Engelhardt argued in 2017 that Lafora should be credited with the eponym, because he named them six years before Trétiakoff.