Andrej A. Romanovsky's Mentors

Soon after entering the Ivan Pavlov Medical School in St. Petersburg, Russia, I started working as a volunteer in the Department of General Pathology (Yelena Andreevna Korneva, Head), Institute of Experimental Medicine. My immediate supervisors were Victor Al’fredovich Grigor’ev (for a short time) and then Evgenij Martynovich Belyavskij. Evgenij infected me with the Fever virus, and I have been suffering from this disease – without any remissions – through this day...

From St. Petersburg I moved to Minsk, Belarus, to enter a Ph.D. program and study thermoregulation at the Institute of Physiology (Valerij Nikolaevich Gourine, Director). While at Valerij’s institute, I had the chance to work together, however briefly, with Ladislav Jansky, Miklos Szekely, and Zoltan Szelenyi. Miklos not only became my close friend, but also visited my lab for extended periods of time, both in Portland and Phoenix; hence, he is both my mentor and a FeverLab member. I then went for postdoctoral training with Clark M. Blatteis, a world’s authority on fever research. While working with Clark, I met William S. Hunter (who later spent some time in FeverLab) and Lloyd D. Partridge. The numerous and long discussions I had with Lloyd changed my thinking about biological control...

I am trying to be brief, but the list of my mentors must include my mother, Ekaterina Stepanovna Romanovskaya, a former math teacher herself, who taught me both to work hard and to enjoy solving a problem. It also has to include a constellation of my high school teachers: Konstantin Mihajlovich Kalmanov (math), Tamara Mihajlovna Gribova (physics), Svetlana Georgievna Gribanova (chemistry), and Asya Vasil’evna Fomina (geography). I would also like to mention my colleagues whom I have learned from while working side by side (Osamu Shido) or through conversation (Kazuyuki Kanosue and Shaun F. Morrison). I cannot name everyone, but I am thankful to all my teachers.

Evgenij Martynovich Belyavskij (1939-1996). Photo courtesy of Marina P. Lesnikova.

Valery Nikolaevich Gourine (1938-2007). Photo courtesy of Alexander V. Gourine.

Clark M. Blatteis, Professor Emeritus, University of Tennessee Distinguished Professor, Memphis, TN. Photo courtesy of Clark M. Blatteis.

Lloyd D. Partridge (1922-2005). The portrait was painted from Lloyd’s photo taken in the Himalayan Mountains, Nepal. Photo courtesy of L. Donald Partridge.

May 2009