Danilevskii, Vasilii

Born Jan. 13 (25), 1852, in Kharkov; died Feb. 25, 1939, in Kharkov. Soviet physiologist; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1926).

Danilevskii graduated from the University of Kharkov in 1874. He became a professor at the University of Kharkov (1883–1909 and 1917–21) and later at the Kharkov Medical Institute (1921–26). In 1927 in Kharkov he organized the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Endocrinology and Organotherapy, where he worked until the end of his life. His major studies deal with the physiology of the nervous system; he established the presence in the cerebral cortex of the centers that regulate the activity of the internal organs, and he was the first to record electrical phenomena in the brains of dogs. He also described the summation of electrical stimuli of the vagus. Danilevskii was a pioneer of the physiological study of hypnosis in animals and man. He investigated the effect of spermine and ovarin on the isolated heart and the influence of insulin on the sympathetic nervous system. In addition, he discovered and studied a number of parasites of the blood in birds.