Ivane Beritashvili

Ivan Solomonovich Beritashvili, also I. Beritov or J. Beritoff (ივანე სოლომონის–ძე ბერიტაშვილი in Georgian, Иван Соломонович Бериташвили (Беритов) in Russian; December 19, 1884 – December 29, 1974), was one of the great Soviet and Georgian physiologists, one of the founders of the modern biobehavioral science. He was a founder and director of a school of physiology in Georgia; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939), founding member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944) and of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR (1941). In 1964 Beritashvili received Hero of Socialist Labor award. For more than a half-century of his activity, Beritashvili was considered a leader among neurophysiologists of Central and Eastern European countries and the former Soviet Union. In the study of higher brain functions he tried to bridge the gap between physiology and psychology and did much to bring them closer together. In 1958–1960 together with Herbert Jasper and Henri Gastaut, he was one of the founders of the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO).

Britashvili was born in Tiflis Governorate on December 19, 1884 into the family of a Georgian Orthodox priest in the small village of Vegini in Kakheti, in the Eastern region of Georgia (at that time part of the Russian Empire). Following in his fathers footsteps he studied for the priesthood at the theological seminary in Tiflis (Tbilisi). Because he came to dislike the prospect of becoming a priest, the young Ivane took examinations for the school-leaving certificate at the 2nd Tiflis gymnasium in 1906. In the same year he enrolled in the Natural Division of the Department of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of St. Petersburg University and soon attracted the attention of the professors of their abilities and hard work. Beritashvili began his experimental research early, as a third year student under the supervision of the eminent Russian physiologist Prof. Nikolay E. Wedensky (1852–1922). Beritashvili studied the problem of reciprocal innervation of skeletal musculature in frogs showing that local strychninization of the dorsal horn did not disrupt the coordination of the “wiping” reflex. The results of his first work were published in 1911. In the preceding year he graduated from the university and was invited by Wedensky for the first 2.5 years and then for a further 2 years to work in the University Physiological Laboratory.

...
Wikipedia