Kazakhstan in the fate of Academician L.S. Shtern

Eminent physiologist and biochemist Lina Solomonovna Shtern (1878-1968) entered the Medical Faculty of the University of Geneva after secondary education. She began research in the area of biological oxidation, resulting in the discovery of enzyme poly-phenoloxidase at Geneva University. From 1917 to 1925, she headed the Department of Physiological Chemistry of the Swiss University. In 1925, she returned to the USSR and worked as Professor of Moscow Medical Institute named after N.I. Pirogov, then as Director of the Institute of Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1938, she became a member of the Communist Party of the Bolsheviks. In 1929, L.S. Shtern founded the Physiological Institute of the Ministry of Education and the national health Committee in Moscow and headed it until 1948 when it was eliminated. On June 1, 1935, L.S. Shtern obtained a scientific degree of the Doctor of Biological Sciences without defending a thesis. In 1939, she was elected a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in 1944 a member of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. With the beginning of the Second World War, Lina Solomon-ovna Shtern was in evacuation in Kazakhstan and continued to work. She sent all her forces to help the front: trained surgeons in her method of treatment of shock in hospitals. Thanks to her serum, it was possible to fight against tuberculosis, encephalitis, tetanus. She saved thousands of children finding a new method of dealing with meningitis with streptomycin. In 1943, Shtern was one of the first laureates of the Stalin Prize. After the war, in 1949, Shtern received the copyright certificate for her new method of treatment of tuberculous meningitis by intracranial injection of streptomycin, which saved thousands of children. At the initiative of Lina Solo-monovna, a systematic study of such fundamental biological problems as sleep and longevity was started, she put forward her own conception of these phenomenon. Lina Solomonovna spoke fluent French, German, English and Italian. Before moving to the USSR, her works were published in French and German. She was a member of the Presidium of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. In 1949, L. Shtern was accused in the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (Night of the Muredered Poets). In July 1952, only one of the defendants (the other defendants were executed) was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison followed by 5 years of exile. She was in exile in Kazakhstan, Jambul. She was allowed to return to Moscow under an amnesty in 1953, although she was formally rehabilitated only in November 1958. Since the first of March 1953, she was restored to the rank of academician. In 1954-1968, she headed the Department of Physiology of the Institute of Biophysics, the USSR Academy of Sciences. Geneva University awarded her an honorary doctorate for outstanding scientific achievements in 1960. Academician L.S. Shtern wrote fundamental works on chemical and physical-chemical bases of vital activity of humans and animals, developed a theory of barrier functions and justified their importance for maintaining the constancy of the internal environment; she studied in detail the blood-brain barrier. The works of L. Shtern about the importance of non-specific products of metabolism (metabolites) in the life of the organism played an important role in the development of the problem of humoral regulation of functions.

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