Leon Abgarowitsch Orbeli

Leon Abgarowitsch Orbeli

Leon (Levon) Abgarowitsch Orbeli ( Armenian Լեւոն Աբգարի Օրբելի , Russian Леон (Левон) Абгарович Орбели * June 25 ^jul. / 7. July  1882 ^greg. In Tsaghkadzor ; † 9. December 1958 in Leningrad ) was an Armenian - Russian physiologist and university professors .

Life

Orbeli's grandfather Josif Joakimowitsch (Owsep Owakomowitsch) was high priest and preacher in the cathedral in Tbilisi after training at Moscow's Lasarev seminary . Orbeli's father Abgar Josifowitsch married Princess Varvara Moissejewna Argutinska from the family of the Catholicos of all Armenians Joseph II (Ovsep Arlutjan, Prince Argutinsky-Dolgoruki) after studying law at the University of St. Petersburg . Orbeli's older brother was the lawyer and archaeologist Ruben Orbeli , while the orientalist and Hermitage director Joseph Orbeli was his younger brother.

Orbeli left the 3rd grammar school in Tbilisi in 1899 with a gold medal. He then studied medicine at the Military Medical Academy (WMA) in St. Petersburg as a self-payer, so that he did not have to serve as a military doctor afterwards. While still a student, he worked in Ivan Pavlov's laboratory and attended his physiology lectures . After completing his studies with honors in 1904, he began working as an adjunct at the WMA Medical Institute, which he did not graduate. He was now working as a doctor in the military hospital in Kronstadt . He then moved to the St. Petersburg Naval Hospital in order to be able to continue his scientific work with Ivan Pavlov at the Institute for Experimental Medicine (IEM) . In 1907 he became Pavlov's assistant in the Department of Physiology. During this time he became a doctor in one of the cruisers appointed, the Russia of Argentina bought. The cruiser was to be used in the Russo-Japanese War . However, Japan managed to buy up the cruisers intended for Russia, so Orbeli stayed in St. Petersburg. In 1907 he left the service in the Navy.

1908 Orbeli was his dissertation Conditional reflexes of the eye in dogs for Doctor of Medical Sciences PhD. In 1909 he traveled to England to study in the physiological laboratories of John Newport Langley and Joseph Barcroft and to Germany to Ewald Hering as well as to the marine biological station in Naples . In 1911 he returned to the IEM. In addition, he became a private lecturer and then a lecturer at the Department of Physiology at the WMA as well as a professor for women's college courses .

In 1917, after the October Revolution , Orbeli became co-editor of the Russian trade journal Physiological Journal , and in 1937 he became the editor in charge. During these years Orbeli was a professor at the Agricultural Institute , the 1st Medical Institute (1920-1931) and the Chemical - Pharmaceutical Institute in Leningrad as well as at the University of Dorpat . He headed the Physiological Laboratory and was then Scientific Director at the PF Lesgaft Institute for Education, Sport and Health and Professor of Physiology (1913–1957). In 1925 he was appointed to the chair of physiology at the WMA as successor to Ivan Pavlov. In 1932 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . In 1935 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (AN-SSSR) . 1943–1950 he was the director of the WMA. In addition, he was 1936-1950 director of the IP Pavlov Institute for Physiology of the AN-SSSR in Leningrad. In 1943 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic founded by his brother Joseph . He was also director (with the rank of colonel general of the military medical service) of the IP Pavlov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Pathology of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (AMN-SSSR) founded in 1944 , of which he became a member.

After the conference of the All Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1948 with TD Lyssenko's speech and the subsequent Stalin ban against classical genetics , Orbeli found himself in a difficult position. On the one hand, as Vice President of the AN-SSSR, he had to follow the decisions of the All Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. On the other hand, as the successor to IP Pavlov, he was committed to classical genetics and related science and research. He was asked to align genetic research with Lyssenkoism and to select or dismiss his employees accordingly. Orbeli did not follow this and hired the geneticist Mikhail Jefimowitsch Lobaschow (1907–1971), who had been dismissed from the University of Leningrad . Before the Laboratory of Genetics of the IP Pavlov Institute of Physiology outside Leningrad in Koltuschi in Vsevolozhsk was bust Gregor Mendel taken off the base, and work with the Drosophila - fruit fly was canceled. After the joint meeting of the AN-SSSR and AMN-SSSR in 1950, Orbeli was relieved of all his leadership positions with the exception of the management of the physiological laboratory of the PF Lesgaft Institute for Natural Sciences.

In 1950, on Orbeli's initiative, a group of his employees founded the Laboratory for Evolutionary Physiology in Leningrad according to a decision of the Presidium of the AN-SSSR. In 1956 it became the IM Setschenow Institute for Evolutionary Physiology of the AN-SSSR, of which Orbeli was director until his death.

Orbeli's daughter Marija Leonowna Orbeli was a nuclear physicist and died of radiation sickness .

Orbeli was buried in the Bogoslovskoye cemetery in St. Petersburg . His monument stands in front of the IM Setschenow Institute for Evolutionary Physiology. The LA Orbeli Prize is awarded annually for work on physiology. The Institute of Physiology of the Armenian Academy of Sciences bears Orbeli's name as well as a street in St. Petersburg. An LA Orbeli museum has been established in Orbeli's birthplace. In 2000 an Orbeli stamp was issued .

Honors

• Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1936)
• IP Pavlov Prize of the AN-SSSR (1937)
• Anniversary medal "XX years of the Red Workers and Peasants Army"
• Stalin Prize 1st Class (1941)
• Order of the Red Star (1943)
• Order of Lenin (1944, 1945, 1948, 1957)
• Order of the Red Banner (1944, 1952)
• Hero of Socialist Labor (1945)
• Medal "For the Defense of Leningrad"
• Medal "Victory over Germany"
• Medal "For Victory Over Japan"
• II Metschnikow gold medal of the AN-SSSR (1946)
• Honored Scientist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

Web links

Commons : Leon Orbeli  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Article Orbeli Leon Abgarowitsch in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)http: //vorlage_gse.test/1%3D037448~2a%3DOrbeli%20Leon%20Abgarowitsch~2b%3DOrbeli%20Leon%20Abgarowitsch
2. ↑ Leon Abgarovich Orbeli (on the 90th anniversary of his birth) . In: Neurophysiology . tape 4 , no. 5 , 1972, p. 343-345 , doi : 10.1007 / BF01063004 .
3. ^ AI Grigorev, AN Potapov: The contribution of academician Leon Abgarovich Orbeli and his school to the development of physiology of extreme conditions . In: Ross. Fiziol. Zh. Im. IM Sechenova . tape 93 , no. 7 , 2007, p. 710-718 , PMID 17912845 .
4. ↑ Biography of Leon Abgarovich Orbeli (accessed August 20, 2015).
5. ↑ Орбели Л.А., (1882-1958), физиолог (accessed August 19, 2016).
6. ^ Member entry by Leon A. Orbeli at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on November 30, 2016.
7. ↑ Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences ( Memento of the original from March 13, 2015 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. (accessed on August 21, 2016). 
8. ↑ Орбели Леон Абгарович (July 7, 1882 - December 9, 1958) (accessed on August 20, 2016).
9. ↑ НАГРАДЫ ИМЕНИ И.П. ПАВЛОВА ( Memento of the original from February 24, 2016 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. (accessed on August 19, 2016).