Oleksiy Krontowsky (1885-1933): cell culturing pioneer on the edge of a prison cell

Project in Ukrainian

There are well acknowledged steps in the history of cell culturing. Its narrative designated several laboratories in North America and Western Europe where all main events happened. Roux in France, then Harrison in the US and Carrell in the US and France, while Ringer in Britain and Krebs in Germany made progress with physiological solutions. On the other hand Soviet papers praised Oleksiy Krontowskyi and his students from Kyiv as pioneers in isolated cells manipulation. This part of history of science remains obscure despite Krontowskyi’s contemporary international importance was recognized by becoming the editor of German journal “Archiv fur experimentalle Zellforschung (Explanation)”, unprecedented case for Ukrainian science. He was also elected a vice-president of Third International Congress for Experimental Cytology in Cambridge of 1933, though he died a week short of its start.

Ukrainian biomedical schools of the first half of XX century made important impact into science development even though the territory was a battlefield of several wars and revolutions, and most researchers were banned from international publications and foreign visits since 1930s. There is well established priority of Obraztsov-Strazhesko school in clinical cardiology; Danylevsky, Chagovets and Vorontsov schools in electrophysiology; Bogomoletz school in hematology and immunology; Palladin school in biochemistry; Filatov leadership in ophthalmology and transplantology. In recent years of Ukrainian independence studies emerged of Ukrainian national schools in different biomedical branches, members of which were systematically repressed by Soviet authorities, and thus became extinct or dispersed.

Oleksiy Krontowsky research school fit neither in Soviet narrative, nor in Ukrainian national one. The leader of this group came from Russian town of Penza and from family of Polish origin. Since his first steps in science after graduation from Kyiv University (1910) Krontowsky worked with mammal cell in vitro culturing as well as tumor transplantation in animal models. Krontowsky was important figure in Soviet biomedicine, but his unproletarian origin and non-communist position made him neglected soon after his premature death in 1933. Maybe his short-time prison detention in the beginning of 1931 brought him deeper in shadows. His 25th death anniversary conference was held in Kyiv in 1958 and was the last event to commemorate his impact. Some of his collaborators, including Radzymovska,
Woskresensky, Neshchadymenko, and others were arrested and imprisoned for political reasons, too.

Krontowsky came from the department of Volodymyr Lindemann, a pathologist of wide research interests, being one of his numerous students in Kyiv University. He continued to work under Lindemann in the laboratory of general pathology, one time being a professor after his teacher emigrated. Lindemann also put his student in charge of laboratory in Kyiv Bacteriological Institute. In 1924 Krontowsky established another department when he was a known scientist already – at Kyiv Roentgen Institute. From these 3 institutions most of his school members emerged. There were quite a lot of women scientists in Krontowsky labs, and the most important were Maria Jatsemyrska-Krontowska, Valentyna Radzymovska, and Helen Sparrow-Herma. Krontowsky often published his papers along with students, sharing his authority and impact with them.

Due to the lack of research efforts a full list of Krontowsky publications was never published, only the number is known – up to 80 items. The author of this project collected preliminary list that consists of 72 publications, just 27 of which are in Russian, and others are in international journals, mainly in German, French and British. This can explain why there are short pieces of analysis of general pattern of
Krontowsky research activities in Ukrainian and Russian literature only. It seems that local researchers in history of science either did not have access to foreign journals of 1910s-1930s (quite true, they are mostly absent from libraries), or did not bother to translate those works, or both.

The main topics of Krontowskyi’s research could be widely described as (1) development of cell culturing conditions and their biochemical metabolism analysis, (2) cancer cells cultivating and transplantation, (3) cell culture usage for infectious diseases studies, and (4) impact of ionizing radiation on living cells.

As Krontowskyi is moderately known in Ukraine, it seems he is mainly forgotten in English speaking science. It is not known which foreign researchers made impact on his works, as well as citations and impact of these works. There are some citations in recent literature but no comprehensive analysis was made.

This account is aimed to elucidate biographical facts and the research environment of Oleksiy Krontowsky and to describe personal and gender composition of Krontowsky research school and its impact on contemporary and nowadays research.

• Background and Early Studies of Krontowsky

• Kyiv University: Volodymyr Lindenmann

• Beginnings of the Tissue Culture

• Research in Turbulent Times

• The Three Labs of Krontowskyi

• Foreign Relations in Cell Culturing

• Professor in Prison

• Disclipes of Krontowsky, Their Fates and Impact

• Supplements

This page is created as a part of  Linda Hall Library project “Cell culturing pioneers at the edge of the prison cell: cell biology advances in Kyiv in the political turbulent first third of 20th century” and funded by LHL Ukrainian Fellowship  2023 grant. Author: Oleksiy Boldyriev.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.