Grigore T. Popa

Grigore T. Popa

Grigore T. Popa (born May 1, 1892 in Șurăneşti , Vaslui County , † July 18, 1948 in Bucharest ) was a Romanian doctor and anatomist . As part of his research, he also dealt with endocrinology . He was a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy . The Medical and Pharmaceutical University in Iași bears his name.

biography

From 1903 to 1911 Popa was a student at the National Lyceum ( Colegiul Național ) in Iași. After graduating from university, he studied at the medical faculty there. In the laboratory of Professor Rainer (Bucharest), Popa began to describe the vessels of the pituitary gland in the pituitary trunk as a student .

His further professional training first took place in Chicago. The successful cooperation with Una Lucy Fielding began as a Rockefeller Research Fellow at University College (UCL) in London . In 1930 Fielding and Popa described a venous connection between the anterior pituitary lobe and the hypothalamus , the pituitary portal vein . After Popa's return to Romania, he was appointed to the chair (titular al Catedrei) for anatomy and embryology at the Institute of Anatomy of the Medical Faculty in Iași in 1928.

Medical work

At the suggestion of Professor Grafton Elliot Smith (UCL), Popa and Fielding prepared venous blood vessels of the hypothalami region through studies on 40 adult cadavers, 10 fetuses of different ages and also on dogs, cats, pigs, horses and sheep. They made series of sections (frontal, sagittal and transversal). They colored the preparations by injecting ink. Fielding, professor of histology of the central nervous system, was able to bring her profound knowledge in the creation and interpretation of the cutting sequences to a decisive extent. Both Popa and Fielding were the first to describe a venous connection between the anterior pituitary lobe and the hypothalamus, the pituitary portal vein system. They saw more than a dozen veins extend from the tuberosity of the pituitary gland into the funnel lobe and from there into the tuber cinereum of the hypothalamus . The results of this research were presented to the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland in 1930 and published in the Journal of Anatomy and The Lancet .

Scientific importance

These works were reprinted by the Romanian Academy in 1933 and 1935. Geoffrey Wingfield Harris published in 1938 together with Grigore T. Popa an experimental paper on the technique of operations on the hypotalamo-pituitary region of the rabbit.

The research carried out by Grigore T. Popa and Una Lucy Fielding was recognized by Harris, but also by Harvey Cushing . Fielding and Popa had histologically demonstrated the secretion mechanism and the venous-vascular connection between the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland as an associated unit (control circuit). However, the nature of the relationship between the brain and the pituitary was still controversial at the time.

further activities

GT Popa founded the magazine " Iași Notes " in 1936 together with Mihail Sadoveanu and George Topîrceanu . Grigore T. Popa's theoretical considerations on the biological and social causes of the loss of civilizational values, caused by fascism and communism , may be mentioned here. A. been published.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} G. T. Popa, U. Fielding: Hypophysio-Portal Vessels and their Colloid Accompaniment. In: Journal of anatomy. Volume 67, Pt 2 January 1933, pp. 227-232.1, PMID 17104419 , PMC 1249341 (free full text).
2. ^ GT Popa, U. Fielding: The vascular link between the pituitary and the hypothalamus . In: The Lancet. 216 (5579), 1930, pp. 238-240.
3. ^ GW Harris: A Technique for Operations on the Hypothalamo-Hypophysial Region of the Rabbit. In: Journal of anatomy. Volume 72, Pt 2 January 1938, pp. 226-233, PMID 17104686 , PMC 1252414 (free full text).
4. ↑ Mihai Drăgănescu: GRIGORE T. POPA O gândire despre cunoaştere, moralitate societate şi. ( Memento of the original from February 3, 2013 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. (PDF; 227 kB) 

Web links

• Biography (romanian)