Krontovsky, Alexey Antoninovich

KRONTOVSKY, Alexey Antoninovich (born 1885), a well-known experimental pathologist and bacteriologist; graduated from the medical faculty of Kiev University in 1911; from 1917, Doctor of Medicine and privat-docent of general pathology and bacteriology at Kiev University. From 1921, professor of the chair of bacteriology; from 1923, professor of the chair of general pathology. From 1924, after leaving the university, Krontovsky devoted himself to scientific research work in the department of experimental medicine of the Kiev Bacteriological Institute and in the department of biology and experimental medicine of the Kiev Roentgen Institute, which he organized in 1924. At the latter, Krontovsky organized a cancer department. Krontovsky is a member of the International Society for Experimental Cytology and many scientific societies in the USSR. He took part in the organization of the international journal "Archiv f. experimentelle Zellforschung, besonders Gewebezuchtung" (Explantation) (Jena, since 1925), for which he serves as an editor. He has about 80 published scientific works. His main research is devoted to comparative and experimental pathology of tumors, tissue cultures (see Tissue Cultures), endocrinology, pathological heredity and human constitution, etc. The idea put forward by Krontovsky—to study the vital activity of explants not by growth, but with the help of physicochemical and microchemical methods—led to a significant expansion and deepening of knowledge in this field, which is being comprehensively and systematically developed by him and his school. Krontovsky found a way to isolate experimental tumors in the organism and outside the organism (see Interplantation), introduced experiments of parallel and cross-investigation in vivo and in vitro, clarified the general type of chemical dynamics of growing tissues and its changes under the influence of radium rays and diphtheria toxin, developed a theory of regeneration and cancer, etc. Krontovsky is the author of a number of reviews and monographs: "Method of Tissue Cultures" (together with L. Polevoy, Kiev, 1917); "Modern Doctrine of Typhus" (Odessa Collection on Typhus, edited by D. Zabolotny and V. Voronin, vol. 1, Odessa, 1920); "Heredity and Constitution" (Kiev, 1925); "A New Methodology for Studying Internal Secretion via Explantation" (Vrachebnoye Delo, 1927, No. 1); "Method of Isolating Tumors in the Organism and Outside the Organism" (Vopr. onkologii, vol. I, 1928, No. 3); "Explantation" (Erg. d. Physiologie, B. XXVI, 1928); "Eine Methode Geschwulste innerhalb und ausserhalb des Organismus zu isolieren" (Zeitschr. f. Krebsforschung, B. XXVIII, 1928); "Review of Works on Tissue Cultures" (Tsentralny med. zhurnal, vol. IV, vol. 2, 1929).