Ginetsinskii, Aleksandr

Born Nov. 17 (29), 1895, in Vologda; died Oct. 20, 1962, in Leningrad. Soviet physiologist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1946).

Ginetsinskii graduated from the First Leningrad Medical Institute in 1922. From 1932 to 1951 he was head of a sub-department at the Leningrad Medical Pediatric Institute, and from 1951 to 1955, he was head of a subdepartment at the Novosibirsk Medical Institute. In 1955 he became deputy director, and in 1958, director, of the Institute of Evolutionary Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. His most important works deal with the physiology of the autonomic nervous system and evolutionary physiology. In 1923, together with his teacher L. A. Orbeli, he established that a tired skeletal muscle is restored to working efficiency when the sympathetic nerve innervating it is stimulated, an occurrence known as the Orbeli-Ginetsinskii phenomenon. Ginetsinskii clarified the spatial distribution of the cholinergic substance in muscles and its transformation in the course of the ontogenetic formation of muscle function; he established the fundamental laws of the evolution of the nerve-muscle apparatus. He analyzed traumatic contractures and proposed a basis for their classification and prognosis. He studied the basic mechanisms of the regulation of water-salt exchange. Ginetsinskii was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and medals.