Khachatur Sedrakovich Koshtoiants

Born Sept. 13 (26), 1900, in AleksandropoF, now Leninakan; died Apr. 2, 1961, in Moscow. Soviet physiologist; corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (AN SSSR, 1939); academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR (1943). Member of the CPSU from 1927.

Koshtoiants graduated from the medical department of Moscow State University in 1926; he became a professor there in 1930 and head of the subdepartment of animal physiology in 1943. He worked at the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Animal Morphology of the AN SSSR from 1936 and directed the academy’s Institute of the History of Natural Science from 1946 to 1953.

Koshtoiants’ principal works dealt with problems of the evolution of functions and the theoretical bases of evolutionary physiology. He elaborated an enzyme-chemical hypothesis of excitation, according to which the mechanism of transmission of excitation from the nerve to the effector is based on the interaction of metabolic processes between them and associated with the structure of their proteins. Koshtoiants wrote a number of works on the history of physiology. He was a deputy to the second convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He received the State Prize of the USSR (1947), the Order of Lenin, three other orders, and medals.