Kostiuk, Platon

Kostiuk, Platon [Костюк, Платон; Kostjuk], b 20 August 1924 in Kyiv, d 10 May 2010 in Kyiv. Neurophysiologist, son of the psychologist Hryhorii Kostiuk; from 1969 full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, and from 1974 full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. A graduate of Kyiv University (1946) and the Kyiv Medical Institute (1949), he joined the staff of the university’s Institute of Animal Physiology. In 1966 he was appointed director of the Institute of Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, and in 1975 academic secretary of the physiology division of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Kostiuk led Soviet research in the use of techniques of molecular biology and biophysics in the study of the nervous system and the brain. He was first in the USSR to use intracellular measurement of electrical potentials in brain studies and he published a book on the subject— Mikroelektrodnaia tekhnika (Microelectrode Technology, 1960). He served as vice-president of the International Organization for Brain Research and the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Biophysics.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]