Platon Kostiuk

Born Aug. 20, 1924, in Kiev. Soviet physiologist; specialist in neurophysiology and electrophysiology. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1966); academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1969); member of the Leopoldine Academy of Naturalists of the German Democratic Republic (1966). Member of the CPSU since 1947.

Kostiuk is the son of G. S. Kostiuk. He graduated from the University of Kiev in 1946 and from the Kiev Medical Institute in 1949. He became a division head of the Institute of Animal Physiology of the University of Kiev in 1956. In 1958 he became head of the division of the general physiology of the nervous system, which he had organized, at the A. A. Bogomolets Institute of Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1966 he became director of the institute itself.

Kostiuk’s principal work deals with the cellular mechanisms of nervous activity. He used microelectrodes in the study of nerve cells for the first time in the USSR and he created a school of researchers in this field. Kostiuk has been awarded the I. P. Pavlov Prize (1962) and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.