Boris Balinsky

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Boris Balinsky ( Ukrainian Борис Іванович Балінський / Borys Iwanowytsch Balinskyj ; born September 10, jul. / 23. September  1905 greg. In Kiev , Kiev Governorate , Russian Empire ; † 1. September 1997 in Johannesburg , South Africa ) was a Ukrainian and South African biologist , Embryologist and entomologist .

Life

Laboratory members on May 20, 1923 in Kiev.
Top row on the far right: Boris Balinsky ; lower row, second from right: Iwan Schmalhausen

Boris Balinsky was born to a family of educators who lived in a large apartment in downtown Kiev. The two children in the family received a good education. Boris spent his childhood summer holidays in the village of Severynivka ( Северинівка ), 80 km south of Kiev , the home of his maternal grandfather, a priest who was later executed by the NKVD . From this he received his first book about collecting butterflies, which was formative for his further life. In 1923 he began studying zoology at the University of Kiev with Iwan Schmalhausen . His first scientific work was published in 1925 and his first monograph in Ukrainian in 1932. In 1928 he married and in 1934 he had a son. In 1933, at the age of 28, he became Professor of Embryology at Kiev University and Deputy Director of the Institute of Zoology of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences .

In 1936 his wife was arrested for “anti-Soviet activities” and the mother of a two-year-old child was placed in a gulag until March 1939 . In 1943 she died of the consequences of her imprisonment in the camp.

Balinsky lost his jobs and found shelter at the Kiev Medical Institute, founded in 1921, where he continued to experiment scientifically and became a professor of zoology. At the beginning of the German-Soviet War , the institute was evacuated to Kharkiv , whereupon he had to change his place of residence several times until the end of the war ( Posen , Marburg ), until he was finally with his mother and son John B. Balinsky (1934-1983), who later also became a zoologist, came to Munich , where between 1945 and 1947 he became professor of histology at the university founded by the United Nations for the administration of education and rehabilitation for displaced persons, where he also met his future second wife. After the temporary university in Munich was closed, he was employed at the Institute of Animal Genetics ( Institute of Animal Genetics of the Agricultural Research Council ) at the University of Edinburgh from 1947 to 1949 .

In 1949 he accepted an invitation to teach as a lecturer at Witwatersrand University in the Union of South Africa . Five years later he was appointed head of the Department of Zoology at the Witwatersrand University, which he held until 1987. In 1956 he was on a sabbatical at Yale University in the United States , where he also met George Emil Palade and Keith R. Porter from the New York Rockefeller Institute .

After returning to Johannesburg, Balinsky began intensive research into developmental biology in combination with electron microscopy and was one of the first to introduce electron microscopy to the study of biological objects in South Africa. He founded the South African Electron Microscope Society of Southern Africa , of which he was president between 1962 and 1973. From 1965 to 1967 he was dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the Witwatersrand University and in 1966 was chosen Balinsky president of the Entomological Society of Southern Africa ( Entomological Society of Southern Africa ). He was also a member of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science and at the International Institute of Embryology in Utrecht .

Balinsky has published a total of more than 130 scientific papers, including 22 in Ukrainian. His textbook "Introduction to Embryology", published in 1960, found international recognition and was a widely known and widely used textbook on embryology. His research on the development of amphibians was the most frequently cited work in this field of science in 1984. Boris Balinsky is considered an important person in molecular biology . He also discovered and described several types of insects and devoted himself to genetic studies of butterflies in old age. He died in Johannesburg at the age of 91.

Web links

 Wikispecies: Boris Ivan Balinsky  - Species Directory

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Biography Boris Balinsky ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on ukrainians-world ; accessed on April 26, 2017 (Ukrainian) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ukrainians-world.org.ua
  2. ↑ Website on John B. Balinsky ( Memento of the original from May 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. with biographical information on Boris Balinsky, on the Iowa State University website ; accessed on April 28, 2017 (English) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.add.lib.iastate.edu
  3. ^ ES Grossmann: Boris Ivan Balinsky 10 September 1905 - 1 September 1997 . In: South African Journal of Science. Vol. 101 May-June, 2005, p. 310, online at www.wiredspace.wits.ac.za (English)
personal data
SURNAME Balinsky, Boris
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Balinskyj Borys Ivanovich (full name); Балінський Борис Іванович (Ukrainian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ukrainian and South African biologist, embryologist and entomologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiev , Kiev Governorate , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 1997
Place of death Johannesburg , South Africa