ISSN 0006�3509, Biophysics, 2010, Vol. 55, No. 3, p. 505. © Pleiades Publishing, Inc., 2010.Original Russian Text © G.R. Ivanitsky, A.V. Kulikov, 2010, published in Biofizika, 2010, Vol. 55, No. 3, p. 553.

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It is already a year that Levon Mikhailovich Chail�akhyan, Corresponding Member of RAS, is notamong us. One can rarely meet a man who would takeso critically and ironically his own significance and thesignificance of all he has done in physiology and bio�physics. Yet there was quite something to be proud of.He published more than 450 works in leading Russianand international journals, was awarded the medal ofthe All�Russia Physiological Society named afterI.P. Pavlov, was a member of the European Academyof Sciences, but there’s too much to enumerate.

One of the first Chailakhyan’s biophysical worksconsidered a kind of cardiac arrhythmia (Wenckebachperiod). The next series of works was devoted to experi�mental and theoretical analysis of complex excitablestructures such as cardiac syncytium and nerve cell den�drites. Together with S.A. Kovalev, V.V. Smolyaninov,Yu.I. Arshavskii, and M.B. Berkinblit he has shown thatthe specific features of the spread of excitation dependnot only on the parameters of cell membranes but alsoon the geometry of the excitable structure. Many of hisworks were connected with the role of highly permeablecell–cell contacts in the function of non�excitable tis�sues. In particular, it has been shown that such contactsare important in embryogenesis.

On the whole, the works in embryology came to beperhaps the most interesting in Chailakhyan’sresearch. Development of novel methods of cell fusionbrought about a great achievement. Chailakhyantogether with B.N. Veprintsev, T.A. Sviridova, andV.A. Nikitin were the first to have cloned a mammal,Masha the Mouse. The report of this feat was pub�lished in 1987, ten years before the famous Dolly theSheep.

Apart of scientific work, Levon Mikhailovich paidmuch attention to pedagogical activity. For many years

he has been reading lectures at the Chair of Physiologyof the Biological Faculty and a special course on thephysiology of excitable tissues at the Chair of Biophys�ics of the Physical Faculty of MSU, he was Dean of theTraining Center of Physiology and Biophysics at thePushchino State University.

The scientific interests of Levon Mikhailovich werenot limited to purely laboratory research. He thoughtmuch over the general problems of brain function. Aresult of these cogitations was the monograph“Sources of the Origin of Mentality or Conscious�ness” (1992).

Levon Mikhailovich was a kind and joyful man,who deserved to be loved; he has left so much after himthat we shall be learning from him for a long time. Andit is not only his science, it is his attitude to friends andopponents, to nature, sports, feasts. He was a man ofremarkable integrity, he could forgive anything, excepterrors in experiments.

L.M. Chailakhyan was Director Organizer of theInstitute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics,RAS in Pushchino, and then worked as its Director for11 years more. Try to imagine a man heading one ofthe key Institutes of the Academy for so long and hav�ing made no enemies—yet this was so. At the age ofeighty he was younger at heart than many who havenot turned fifty.

All his conscious life Levon Mikhailovich toiled tothe glory of our physiology and biophysics. Friendsand colleagues will always remember this fascinatingmain—scientist, educator, and organizer of science.

G.R. Ivanitskyand A.V. Kulikov

He Was Like No Other(In Memoriam Levon Mikhailovich Chailakhyan)

DOI: 10.1134/S0006350910030267

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