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Boris Babkin

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Citizenship
  
British

Name
  
Boris Babkin

Notable awards
  
Royal Society

Known for
  
Babkin reflex

Fields
  
Physiology

Institutions
  
McGill University

Died
  
May 3, 1950

Nationality
  
Russian

Role
  
Physiologist


Boris Babkin

Born
  
17 January 1877 (
1877-01-17
)

Alma mater
  
Kirov Military Medical Academy

Education
  
Russian Academy of Sciences

Books
  
Secretory mechanism of the digestive glands, Pavlov

Boris Petrovitch Babkin FRS, M.D., D.Sc, LL.D (Russian: Бори́с Петро́вич Ба́бкин; 17 January 1877 – 3 May 1950) was a Russian-born physiologist, who worked in Russia, England and Canada.

Contents

Career

Babkin graduated from the Military Medical Academy, St. Petersburg, with a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1904. He held professorships at the Novo-Alexandria Agricultural Institute and the University of Odessa, before being imprisoned and exiled from Russia in 1922, due to his criticism of the October Revolution.

He then spent two years in England, working at University College London under Ernest Starling, before joining Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, as Professor of Physiology.

In 1928 Babkin became a research professor at McGill University, Montreal, where he spent the remainder of his career. He chaired the Physiology department between 1940 and 1941, and following his retirement was invited to become Research Fellow of Neurosurgery by Wilder Penfield; a position he held until his death in 1950.

In 1950, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for "his work on the digestive glands, conditioned reflexes and the cortical representation of autonomically innervated organs. He demonstrated that a) the three pancreatic enzymes are secreted in parallel, b) sympathetic and parasympathetic fibres innervate different cells in the salivary glands and c) histamine stimulates exclusively gastric parietal cells. His researches not only refuted Heidenhain's theory of "secretory" and "trophic" nerves but led to the conception of the elements of the digestive glands being activated by different nerves and hormones. Author of "Die aussere Sekretion der Verdauungsdrusen" and "Secretory Mechanism of the Digestive Glands""

Honours

  • 1904, Doctor of Medicine, Kirov Military Medical Academy
  • 1924, Honorary Doctor of Science, University College London
  • 1943, Honorary Doctor of Letters, Dalhousie University
  • 1949, Friedenwald Medal, American Gastroenterological Association
  • 1950, Fellow of the Royal Society
  • References

    Boris Babkin Wikipedia