Platon Kostiuk

Platon Kostyuk was born in Kiev to the family of the Ukrainian psychologist Hryhoriy Kostyuk. A native speaker of both Ukrainian and Russian, Kostyuk studied English and German, and graduated from high school when the German–Russian War began in 1941. Kostyuk entered Stalingrad University to study biology and Roman philology. He was later evacuated to Siberia where he studied medicine till 1945. After half a year of military medical service, he was demobilized for entry into the Department of Biology at Kyiv University. In parallel he studied psychiatry at Kyiv Medical Institute. Kostyuk worked on his doctoral thesis in Danylo Vorontsov's laboratory of physiology. In his research, he developed microelectrode equipment independently of Judith Graham Pool and Ralph W. Gerard (1949). He completed his doctoral thesis in 1957. In 1958, Kostyuk became Head of the Department of General Nervous System Physiology at the Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology. From 1969 to 2010, he served as the director of the institute.[3]

In 1960–61, Kostyuk was invited to John Eccles' Laboratory in Canberra, Australia to study the mechanisms of synaptic inhibition in the spinal cord. In 1974, he was elected a member (academician) of the Soviet Academy of Science. In 1975–1988, he was the academician-secretary of the Section of Physiology of the academy. In 1975–1990, he was also a deputy in the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR and in 1985–90 was its chairman.

Platon Kostiuk was the first to introduce microelectrode studies of the nervous system in the USSR.[4] He was the first to prove directly the presence of calcium channels in neuronal cell membranes.[5] Under his supervision, two types of calcium currents were discovered: high-voltage activated and low-voltage activated.[6] He also proposed an original hypothesis on calcium channels' selectivity mechanism.[7]

Kostiuk was a vice-president of the International Union for Physiologycal Sciences from 1989–1993.[8]

In 1966 he was elected a Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.[9]

Kostiuk students established Kostyuk Foundation to support young scientists and promote physiological research in Ukraine. Once a year Foundation presents Kostyuk Award to outstanding young researchers in field of biomedical sciences.[10]

He published more than 1000 scientific papers in Ukrainian, Russian, and English. Some of the most important include:

• Kostyuk, P. G.; Eccles, J.С.; Schmidt, R. F. (1962). "Central pathways responsible for depolarization of primary afferent fibres". J. Physiol.(Gr.Brit.). 65 (2): 237–257.
• Kostyuk, P. G.; Araki, T.; Ito, M.; Oscarsson, O. (1962). "Injection of alcaline cations into cat spinal motoneurones". Nature. 196 (4861): 1319–1320. doi:10.1038/1961319a0.
• Kostyuk, P. G.; Krishtal, O.A.; Pidoplichko, V.I. (1975). "Effect of internal fluoride and phosphate on membrane currents during intracellular dialysis of nerve cells". Nature. 257 (2): 691–693. doi:10.1038/257691a0.
• Kostyuk, PG; Molokanova, EA; Pronchuk, NF; Savchenko, AN; Verkhratsky, AN (December 1992). "Different action of ethosuximide on low- and high-threshold calcium currents in rat sensory neurons". Neuroscience. 51 (4): 755–8. doi:10.1016/0306-4522(92)90515-4. PMID 1336826.

• Platon Kostyuk on a NeuroTree
• Platon Kostyuk on a Chemistry Tree
• Helmut Kettenmann. Platon Gregorievich Kostyuk (1924-2010) in memoriam. FENS News, 17 May, 2010
• Verkhratsky, Alexei; North, R. Alan; Petersen, Ole H.; Krishtal, Oleg (2010). "In memoriam: Platon Kostyuk (1924–2010)". Cell Calcium. 48 (1): 91–93. doi:10.1016/j.ceca.2010.07.003. ISSN 0143-4160.

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