Leontovich, Aleksandr Vasilevich

Leontovich, Aleksandr Vasil’evich 

Born Oct. 20 (Nov. 1), 1869, in Kiev; died Dec. 15, 1943, in Moscow. Soviet physiologist and histologist; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1929) and Honored Scientist of the Ukrainian SSR (1939). The father of M. A. Leontovich.

Leontovich graduated from the University of Kiev in 1893. The subject of his doctoral dissertation (1900) was human skin innervation. In 1913 he became a professor at the Moscow Institute of Agriculture (since 1923, the K. A. Timiriazev Moscow Agricultural Academy). In 1936 he became director of a division of the Institute of Clinical Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Leontovich’s major works dealt with the histology and physiology of the peripheral nervous system. He studied the phenomena of the physiological degeneration and regeneration during life of the structural elements of nervous tissue. He advanced the notion that the neuron functions as the transmitter of an action current by means of induction from one neuron to another. He perfected a staining method for nervous tissue.

REFERENCES

Bodrova, N. V., and B. V. Kraiukhin. Vydatnyi radians’kyi fiziolog O. V. Leontovych. Kiev, 1950. (Bibliography.)