Geeks in History – Lina Solomonovna Stern
Today’s Geeks in History brings to light a woman who saved many lives during World War II and contributed to the public international image of the USSR against Nazi Germany. Her name was Lina Solomonovna Stern (Russian: Лина Соломоновна Штерн), and her research and activism, while not as well known especially during the Cold War, should be brought a bit more to public light. Let’s go ahead and dive in.
Lina Solomonovna Stern was born August 26, 1878 in Liepāja in the Russian Empire (today’s Latvia) into a Jewish family. She was educated in Geneva, Switzerland where she wrote her first work,Study of the So-called Internal Secretion of the Kidneys, and became a professor at the University of Geneva in 1918, the first woman to become so, and headed the department of Physiological Chemistry. Her research specialty was cellular oxidation. In 1925, she moved to the Soviet Union, and from 1925–1948 she served as Professor of the Second Medical Institute and from 1929–1948, the Director of Institute of Physiology of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
While in the USSR, she and her group focused on sleep and longevity and also worked on the problems of the hemato-encephalic and histohematic barriers. She is considered to be one of the first scientists to entertain the concept of a blood-brain barrier. Her work became implemented in clinical practice and saved thousands of lives during World War II, especially where fighting was heaviest. In 1939 she became the first female full member of the Academy and in 1943, won the Stalin Prize, one awarded annually to individuals in the fields of science, mathematics, literature, arts, and architecture to honour the most prominent achievements which either advanced the Soviet Union or the cause of socialism.
Her studies around the blood-brain barrier led her to believe that it was more than just a concept, but a mechanism of the body that might extend to other organs.
“The blood-tissue barrier is not only a morphological concept. It is a functional unit, or, to be more exact, a mechanism, which has its anatomical foundation – namely, walls of the capillaries. We must remember that it is a complex mechanism, and the penetration of substances through a capillary wall is only the first phase, only one part in the complex process of the passage of substances from the bloodstream to parenchymatous cells of the organ.”
It was her theories that led to treatments for syphilis of the brain, tetanus, encephalitides and tuberculous meningitis. Because drugs and antibiotics were blocked by the barriers, she showed that treatments needed to be administered directly into the ventricles of the brain.
During World War II, Stern was a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) organized by the Soviet Union in order to mobilize world Jewish support for the USSR’s war effort against Nazi Germany. Composed of Jewish public figures and intellectuals, the Committee was disbanded after the war and its chairman, Solomon Mikhoels, was murdered in January 1948. In 1952 its leading members were tried in secret and all except Stern were executed on August 12, 1952. She was sentenced to a prison term, followed by five-year exile to Dzhambul (current Taraz), Kazakhstan.
Thankfully, after Stalin’s death in 1953, Lina Stern was allowed to return to Moscow and in headed the Department of Physiology at Biophysics Institute from 1954 to 1968. She died on March 7, 1968, continuing her work with vigor and dignity until the end.
Geeks in History is a biweekly column about notable geeks of the past and how they impacted modern life.
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