Olga Lepeshinskaya (biologist)
| Olga Lepeshinskaya | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Olga Borisovna Protopopova August 18, 1871 Perm, Russia |
| Died | October 2, 1963 (aged 92) Moscow, Russia |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Fields | Biology |
Olga Borisovna Lepeshinskaya (Russian: Ольга Борисовна Лепешинская) born as Protopopova (Russian: Протопопова) (August 18, 1871 – October 2, 1963), was a Soviet biologist, a personal protegée of Vladimir Lenin, later Joseph Stalin, Trofim Lysenko and Alexander Oparin. She rejected genetics and was an advocate of spontaneous generation of life from inanimate matter.
Lepeshinskaya completed her study as a feldsher in St. Petersburg in 1887 and practised at various places in Siberia. In 1898 she joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and later the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1903 she and her husband left Russia and went into exile to Switzerland for three years. In 1915, she completed her medical training in Moscow.
Lepeshinskaya was a participant in the October Revolution. She lectured at the University of Medicine in Moscow until 1926, briefly interrupted by a 1919 stay at the Tashkent University, then worked at the Kliment Timiryazev Institute of Biology. In 1941 she became the head of the Department of Live Matter at the Institute of Experimental Biology, USSR Academy of Medical Sciences for the remainder of her career.
Lepeshinskaya worked well into her eighties and died in Moscow at the age of 92 from pneumonia.
In the 1920s Lepeshinskaya discredited the work of her supervisor, Alexander Gurvitch, who investigated biophotons and mitogenic rays. She claimed that low doses of ultraviolet light were released by dying cells that had been treated with high doses of UV light. Later she claimed that cells could propagate by disintegration into granules which could generate new forms of cells, different from the parental cells. Also, crystals of inorganic matter could be converted into cells by adding nucleic acids. Further, she espoused spontaneous generation and the presence of a "vital substance". These claims were propagated as official dogma in the Soviet Union. A claim that soda baths fostered rejuvenation led to a temporary shortage of baking soda. She based her career on claims to observe de novo emergence of living cells from non-cellular materials, supporting such claims by fabricated proofs which were "confirmed" by others eager to advance in the politicized scientific system. Actually, she filmed the death and subsequent decomposition of cells, then projected these films reversed.
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