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Jerzy Adam Vetulani
Born(1936-01-21)January 21, 1936
Kraków
DiedApril 6, 2017(2017-04-06) (aged 81)
Kraków
CitizenshipPolish
Occupation(s)neuroscientist
pharmacologist
biochemist
SpouseMaria née Pająk (married 1963)
ChildrenMarek
Tomasz
Parent(s)Adam Vetulani
Irena Latinik

Jerzy Adam Gracjan Vetulani (21 January 1936 - 6 April 2017) was a Polish neuroscientist, pharmacologist and biochemist, professor of natural sciences, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Learning, one of the most frequently cited Polish scientists in the field of biomedicine after 1965.[1]

Profesor, Head of the Department of Biochemistry (1976–2006), Deputy Director for Science Affairs (1994–2001) and Vice Chairman of the Scientific Council (2002–2017) of the Institute of Pharmacology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kraków.[2] Author of more than 200 original research papers. He first gained recognition for an early hypothesis of the mechanism of action of antidepressant drugs, suggesting, together with Fridolin Sulser, that downregulation of beta-adrenergic receptors is responsible for their effects.[3][4]. In 1983 he received Anna-Monika Prize for research on mechanisms of action of electroconvulsive therapy.[5] Beside depression, his scientific interests include memory, addiction and neurodegeneration. Active also in the field of popularization of science, for more than twenty years he was the editor-in-chief of the magazine Wszechświat. He is also known for his popular lectures, gathering large audiences on various occasions.

He was an announcer and one of the creators of Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret (1954–1961) and a regular participant of the anthropological talking magazine Gadający Pies (The Talking Dog, 2010–2015). An activist of the democratic opposition in the Polish People's Republic, since 1980 was a member of the Solidarity trade union. He was a candidat for president of Kraków in 2002 election.

An honorary fellow of Indian Academy of Neurosciences and Oxford Neurological Society, honorary doctor of the Medical University of Silesia and the Medical University of Łódź, he received several other awards and official distinctions, including Gold Cross of Merit and Knight's Cross of Polonia Restituta.

He actively argues for legalization of marijuana and depenalization of all drugs for adult users, often criticizing repressive drug policy in Poland.

Biography

1936–1952: Early years and rebellion

Jerzy with his mother Irena Latinik-Vetulani, 1938

He was born on January 21, 1936[6] at the private gynecological hospital at Garncarska Street in Kraków, Poland as the son of Adam Vetulani, Professor and head of the Department of Church Law at the Jagiellonian University, and Irena Latinik, a biologist and daughter of Polish Army general Franciszek Latinik. In 1938 his younger brother Jan was born. The family occupied an apartment on the ground floor of the house of professors of the Jagiellonian University at Plac Inwalidów, employing a maid, cook and Olga Rutter, a child educator.

As Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Adam Vetulani took part in the defense war. With his unit, he went to Romania and then to France, where he also fought on the front. Eventually he was interned in Switzerland, where he spent the rest of the war organizing school camps for Polish soldiers.[7] The correspondence sent to the occupied Poland was signed by the Fraulein Kupfer alias.[8]

After the German army entered Cracow, Irena Vetulani and her sons had to leave the apartment. They were given forty-eight hours to move, with the possibility of keeping movable property.[9] They moved to the premises at Garncarska Street 4, where Józefa Onitsch, the wife of General Zygmunt Zieliński, gave them refuge. The family was supported by Adam Vetulani's brother, Tadeusz, who has been living in Cracow during the war. Thanks to her good knowledge of German, Irena took up her job as a translator in the spirit monopoly. Jerzy and Jan remained in war years under the care of the mother who raised both sons "in a patriotic sense of honor".[10] Every Sunday at home there was a "mystery" and the family used to sing Polish, Catholic religious song Boże, coś Polskę.[11] In his childhood, Jerzy was a religious boy; he even served as an altar boy at St. Mary's Basilica.

Vetulani recalled the war years as interesting, full of fascinating activity and exploring the surrounding world, undermining the collective, martyrological picture of despair and misery. Together with his younger brother and friend from the tenement house, Andrzej Mirocki, they founded an insect gatherer club. For the most spectacular and precious part of their collection, they recognized a diverse collection of butterflies.[12] Mother never let children witness one of the street executions.

Jerzy began his education in 1942 and immediately entered the second class of secret sets led by Mrs. Iwiczowa, as he was already able to read and write.[10] From 1948 he attended the Henryk Sienkiewicz High School in Cracow, and then, after his liquidation, Bartłomiej Nowodworski High School, where he passed matura in 1952, obtaining a certificate with a distinction for best pupils.[13]

Already as a teenager, Vetulani has completely walked away from religion. He described himself from a young age as "a rebel who did a lot of things in spite of his parents." At the age of twelve he enrolled in the Union of Polish Youth. He was removed from the organization as a result of a typo in the school newspaper article.[14] In the text he mistakenly and unconsciously, instead of "the basis of socialism" (podstawy socjalizmu), he wrote "the washers of socialism" (podsrawy socjalizmu).[15] Later he also joined the Atheists and Freethought Club. He belonged to the Revolutionary Youth Union,[16] a formation of idealistic communists who were striving for reform of Polish communist system that they considered defective.

1952–1973: Studies, cabaret, Institute of Pharmacology

Vetulani in the 1960s

In 1952 he began his studies in biology at the Jagiellonian University (specializing in animal physiology),[13] which he completed in 1957, defending his thesis on the effects of ascorbic acid on rabbit blood.[6][17] In March 1956, he began a volunteer internshipat at the Department of Pharmacology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (later renamed the Institute of Pharmacology), where he has been working since, until the end of his life. Janusz Supniewski was head of the Department at that time.[13] In 1957, after obtaining master's degree, Vetulani was hired as an assistant.

Later, also at the Jagiellonian University, he studied chemistry (specializing in theoretical chemistry)[13]. He graduated in 1963.[6] As an exchange student he spent seven weeks in Swansea, where he worked at the British Iron and Steel Research Association.[18] He rented a room at a senior Welsh marriage and studied English intensively; every day he bought an edition of Daily Mirror and underlined unknown words, that he later learned.

He was one of the founders and permanent regulars of the Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret. In the mid 1950s, together with a group of friends: Edmund Jarosz, Bronisław Chromy and Lala Skąpska, he took part in the demolition of the basement at Palace Pod Baranami, which soon became room for the cabaret.[19] In 1958, when Piotr Skrzynecki left for Paris, Vetulani temporarily replaced him as a conference caller.[20] It was in Piwnica that he met his future wife, Maria Pająk, whose appearance at the time he compared to Marina Vlady's.[21] They married on July 8, 1963. Soon after that their sons Marek and Tomasz were born, respectively in 1964 and 1965. They also have four grandchildren.[22]

In 1955–1962 he acted as a speaker at the Cracow Student Film Discussion Club.[2] Vetulani admitted that "it was a good thing because "it taught him to speak short, interesting and fast".[20] In 1972 he was a scientific consultant for the film Illumination directed by Krzysztof Zanussi.[23]

After the death of his brother, who drowned during a canoeing on the Dunajec River in 1965, he mobilized to begin work on his Ph.D. dissertation.[24] He obtained Ph.D. degree in natural sciences in 1966 from Ludwik Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy of the Polish Academy of Sciences upon dissertation The action of isoxazole and pyrazole derivatives on the metabolism of the animal system prepared under the direction of Professor Józef Hano.[25] In the same year went to Great Britain for one year Riker scholarship. In the UK he worked on mastering spectrofluorimetric methods at the University of Cambridge under the direction of Arnold Burgen.[17] During his stay in Cambridge, he encountered Bożena Puchalska and Juliusz Hibner.

After returning to Poland he started work in the field of psychopharmacology under the direction of Jerzy Maj.

1973–1989: In the orbit of world science. Opposition

After submitting a habilitation dissertation, for almost two years he left for the United States, where he worked from 1973 to 1975 as Research Associate Professor at the Vanderbilt University.[17] He gained international recognition after the discovery in 1975 (with Fridolin Sulser) of β-downregulation by chronic administration of antidepressants and the formulation of β-downregulation hypothesis as a mechanism of action of antidepressants. The work on this subject, published by Vetulani and Sulser in Nature, became citation classic, receiving 580 vocations by 2007.[17]

After his mother's death, he and his family decided to return to Poland. Vetulani received his habilitation degree in 1976 (upon work Neuroleptics, monoamine oxidase inhibitors and dopamine beta-hydroxylase inhibitors: their actions and synergies), an associate professor in 1983, and a professor in 1989.[2] In 1976, he was appointed Head of the Department of Biochemistry at Institute of Pharmacology.[26]

Since 1978 he has regularly collaborated with the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR, National Research Council) in Rome. On behalf of the Institute of Pharmacology of the Polish Academy of Sciences he was a coordinator of the joint research program of his home Institute with the Istituto di Biology Cellulare and Neurobiology (IBCN). When visiting Rome, he usually received an audience with John Paul II, who was a student of his father and friend of the family.

In 1983 Vetulani received International Anna-Monika Prize (2nd class) for his research on the mechanism of of electroconvulsion. In years 1981–2002 he was the editor-in-chief of Wszechświat, one of the oldest Polish popular science magazines.

From 1980 he was an activist in the Solidarity movement.[2]

1989–2006: Late career and social activity

Vetulani often appears on the stage of the talking magazine Gadający Pies (The Talking Dog).

In 2006, Vetulani left the position of Head of the Department of Biochemistry of the Institute of Pharmacology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and devoted himself to a large degree to popular science. In this field he was active already in the 1960s when he published short texts in Wszechświat, as a rule signing articles with his own name or with pseudonym J. Latini.[17] After 2000 he became known for his popular science lectures, which focus on themes connected with the functioning of human brain and the relationship between neuroscience and various social and cultural aspects. In 1999 he was a lecturer during the Cracow Brain Days, and since 2000 he has performed every year since the Cracow Brain Week organized as a part of Brain Awareness Week.

Vetulani also published several popular articles and on the topic of neuroscience. He is a member of the European Dana Alliance for the Brain (EDAB); and from 1981 to 2002 was the Editor-in-Chief of Wszechświat, the oldest Polish popular science magazine.

Since June 2010 he has run a blog called Piękno neurobiologii (The Beauty of Neuroscience) on WordPress. On his blog Vetulani comments on the curiosities of the human brain.[27]

Vetulani died at the age of 81 on April 6, 2017 at a hospital in Kraków from complications of injuries sustained after being struck by an automobile in late March.[28][29]

Selected works

Original research papers

Praca dotyczyła odkrycia, że klonidyna hamuje zespół odstawienia po morfinie. W pracy autorzy zasugerowali, że efekt ten może być wykorzystany klinicznie.

Monographs and booklets

The book was reissued twice (in 1995 and 1998). Sławomir Zagórski, a journalist of Gazeta Wyborcza, in a review of the book called it a page-turner. Małgorzata Czartoszewska of journal Życie Warszawy pointed its "usefulness and universality".[30][31]
The book was published as a continuation of Mózg: fascynacje, problemy, tajemnice and contains mainly commentaries and interviews distributed in the media; apart from the scientific subjects, there are threads about the biography of the author. The title was taken from both the Vetulani blog and the interview conducted by Maria de Hernandez Paluch for the monthly Kraków.[32] Sławomir Zagórski described in Gazeta Wyborcza the two books published by Homini as "extremely interesting".[33]

Interviews

Translations

Awards and honors (selection)

Family tree

References

  1. ^ Najczęściej cytowani naukowcy oraz prace naukowe w Polsce, raport za lata 1965 - 2001 na podstawie bazy “Science Citation Index” dotyczącej wszystkich światowych publikacji (in Polish)
  2. ^ a b c d "Jerzy Vetulani" (in Polish). Polska Akademia Nauk. Retrieved 7 April 2017.
  3. ^ Healy, David (1997). The Antidepressant Era. Harvard University Press. p. 162. ISBN 0-674-03958-0.
  4. ^ Sulser F., Vetulani J.: Action of various antidepressant treatments reduces reactivity of noradrenergic cyclic AMP generating system in limbic forebrain, „Nature”, 257, 1975.
  5. ^ "1982 / 1983 – 2nd Prize (Vetulani)". Anna Monika Stiftung. Retrieved 11 January 2016.
  6. ^ a b c Kto jest kim w polskiej medycynie. Informator biograficzny. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Interpress. 1987. p. 696. ISBN 83-2232339-5.
  7. ^ Adam Vetulani (1976). Poza płomieniami wojny. Internowani w Szwajcarii 1940-45. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej.
  8. ^ Rotkiewicz 2015, p. 17.
  9. ^ Rotkiewicz 2015, p. 15.
  10. ^ a b Kobos 2007, p. 495.
  11. ^ Rotkiewicz 2015, p. 18.
  12. ^ Katarzyna Sroczyńska (18 March 2013). "Macanie świata" (in Polish). Focus. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  13. ^ a b c d Zbigniew Herman. "Doktorzy honoris causa – Jerzy Adam Vetulani" (in Polish). Śląski Uniwersytet Medyczny. Retrieved 22 April 2012.
  14. ^ Małgorzata Iskra (29 April 2011). "Na kanapce Vetulaniego siadywał Karol Wojtyła" (in Polish). Gazeta Krakowska. Retrieved 26 May 2012. ((cite web)): Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  15. ^ Kobos 2007, p. 500.
  16. ^ Rotkiewicz 2015, p. 32.
  17. ^ a b c d e "Jerzy Vetulani – CV" (in Polish). vetulani.wordpress.com. Retrieved 17 May 2012.
  18. ^ Rotkiewicz 2015, p. 62–63.
  19. ^ Kobos 2007, p. 498.
  20. ^ a b "Jerzy Vetulani w Piwnicy pod Baranami" (in Polish). YouTube. 12 March 2012. Retrieved 22 April 2012.
  21. ^ Rotkiewicz 2015, p. 43–44.
  22. ^ Kołodziej, Beata (17 March 2012). "Krakowianie: Rzymskie wakacje, rzymskie zimy". Dziennik Polski, Kronika Krakowska: 2.
  23. ^ "Iluminacja" (in Polish). Filmpolski.pl. Retrieved 11 April 2012.
  24. ^ Kobos 2007, p. 501.
  25. ^ "Jerzy Vetulani at the "Ludzie nauki" Database" (in Polish). nauka-polska.pl. Retrieved 7 kwietnia 2017. ((cite web)): Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  26. ^ Kobos 2007, p. 524.
  27. ^ Pezda, Aleksandra (2011). Koniec epoki kredy. Warszawa: Agora SA. pp. 81–82. ISBN 978-83-268-0517-2. ((cite book)): Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  28. ^ "W wieku 81 lat zmarł profesor Jerzy Vetulani". tvn24.pl. 7 April 2017. Retrieved 7 April 2017. Example (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  29. ^ "Prof. Jerzy Vetulani nie żyje". krakow.wyborcza.pl. 7 April 2017. Retrieved 7 April 2017. Example (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  30. ^ Sławomir Zagórski (5 November 2001). "Recenzja książki Jerzego Vetulaniego „Jak usprawnić pamięć"". Gazeta Wyborcza (in Polish).
  31. ^ Małgorzata Czartoszewska (31 January 1993). "Pamięć „od kuchni"". Życie Warszawy (in Polish).
  32. ^ Jerzy Vetulani (2 August 2011). "Homini kontynuuje Opera Vetulaniana" (in Polish). vetualni.wordpress.com. Retrieved 2 April 2012.
  33. ^ Sławomir Zagórski (15 November 2011). "Tajemnice pamięci" (in Polish). „Gazeta Wyborcza”. Retrieved 12 April 2012.
  34. ^ "Bez ograniczeń. Jak rządzi nami mózg" (in Polish). dwpwn.pl. Retrieved 8 April 2015.
  35. ^ "Mózg i błazen" (in Polish). czarne.com.pl. Retrieved 8 April 2015.
  36. ^ Paweł Walewski (19 May 2015). "Czarna owca bieleje" (in Polish). Polityka. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
  37. ^ "M.P. z 2005 r. Nr 1, poz. 6" (in Polish). isap.sejm.gov.pl. Retrieved 5 February 2013.
  38. ^ Marek Błoński (17 June 2004). "Gothert i Vetulani doktorami honoris causa Śląskiej Akademii Medycznej" (in Polish). Nauka w Polsce. Retrieved 12 April 2012.
  39. ^ "Wideo z uroczystości wręczania doktoratów honorowych" (in Polish). Uniwersytet Medyczny w Łodzi. Retrieved 12 April 2012.
  40. ^ Jerzy Vetulani (30 June 2011). "Otrzymałem Nagrodę im. Zbyszka Thiellego" (in Polish). vetulani.wordpress.com. Retrieved 12 April 2012.
  41. ^ "Wideo z gali wręczania nagrody" (in Polish). YouTube. 4 July 2011. Retrieved 12 April 2012.
  42. ^ Katarzyna Bena (30 March 2012). "Prof. Vetulani został Racjonalistą Roku 2011" (in Polish). Polskie Stowarzyszenie Racjonalistów. Retrieved 12 April 2012.
  43. ^ "Rozstrzygnięto VIII edycję konkursu „Popularyzator Nauki"" (in Polish). Nauka w Polsce. 5 December 2012. Retrieved 31 December 2012.
  44. ^ "Oto nasi Ludzie Roku: dobrzy, mądrzy, dzielni [ZDJĘCIA]" (in Polish). Gazeta Krakowska. 27 February 2014. Retrieved 13 May 2014. ((cite web)): Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  45. ^ Tomasz Stasiowski (30 January 2016). "Profesor Vetulani ze statuetką Mosty Starosty 2016". halogorlice.info. Retrieved 31 January 2016.
  46. ^ "Prof Jerzy Vetulani Awarded an Honorary Fellowship | Oxford Neurological Society". Oxford Neurological Society. 27 March 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2017.

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