Max Belenky

Max Belenky (10th of April 1911, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire – 25th of December 1965, Riga, Latvian SSR) – a pharmacologist, the head of the department of pharmacology of Riga Medical Institute (1952–1965), a cоrresponding member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1960).

M. Belenky was born in the town of Lepel, Vitebsk Governorate (now the Vitebsk Region of Belarus), into the family of a schoolteacher. In the city of Leningrad, to which his family later moved, he completed secondary school and in 1933 graduated from the Second Medical Institute. After working for two years in Eastern Siberia, he returned to Leningrad, undertook postgraduate studies, and worked as an assistant at the Department of Pharmacology.

During the Second World War he served as an army toxicologist in Karelia and on the 3rd Ukrainian Front (1941–1945). After the end of the war he returned to his previous position at the Second Leningrad Medical Institute. From 1947 he worked as an associate professor at the Department of Pharmacology. He defended his doctoral dissertation in 1952 under the supervision of Professor Sergei Anichkov, who was already world-renowned at that time for his research on the blood vessels and heart and for his studies in the pharmacology of the autonomic nervous system.

In the history of the Department of Pharmacology of the Second Leningrad Medical Institute, the work of Associate Professor M. L. Belenky is described as follows:
“He was a talented scientist and an impeccably noble person. Before the war he was an assistant at the department. Mobilized at the beginning of the war, he served as a toxicologist. He was demobilized a year after the end of the war and returned to the department. Professor Anichkov succeeded in engaging him in the problem of the carotid bodies, and Belenky, drawing on his extensive knowledge of biochemistry, demonstrated the biochemical foundations of the chemical sensitivity of the carotid bodies. The results of his work gave a new direction to research at the department, namely the study of reflexes arising in the carotid receptors and directed toward the endocrine glands. The lectures of Anichkov and Belenky were stenographed, and at the suggestion of the USSR Ministry of Health a textbook was published. This was the first pharmacology textbook in which the Pavlovian method of nervism was fully reflected. This textbook was used in all medical schools of the country… Together with his teacher S. Anichkov, a monograph Pharmacology of the Chemoreceptors of the Carotid Body and a Textbook of Pharmacology were written, from which students still study today. M. Belenky is also the author of the book Elements of the Quantitative Evaluation of Pharmacological Effect (1963), which has become a desk reference for every pharmacologist. As a prominent scientist and active public figure, M. Belenky left an indelible mark on the history of our institute.”

After defending his doctoral dissertation, M. Belenky received an invitation to work at the Riga Medical Institute, where from 1952 until the end of his life he had been heading the Department of Pharmacology; in 1953 he was elected professor. Gifted and exceptionally hardworking, Professor Belenky quickly became one of Latvia’s most prominent medical scientists and one of the founders of the Latvian school of pharmacology. As early as 1960 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, and in 1961 he was awarded the title of Honored Scientist of the Latvian SSR. For many years he was a member of the board of the All-Union Pharmacological Society. According to recollections of physicians who studied at the Riga Medical Institute at that time, M. Belenky was a brilliant and erudite lecturer whose lectures were attended not only by students of his course but also by other teachers and practicing physicians.

The life of Max Belenky came to an abrupt end on December 25, 1965. The professor was buried in Riga, at Rainis Cemetery.

Eryka Tjunina

Sources of information:

Arnis Vīksna. Pa ārstu takām. Rīga, Avots, 1990, 154–155; Из истории кафедры фармакологии 2 Ленинградского медицинского института.  http://archive.today/CEjm1

100 nozīmīgas personas Latvijas medicīnas vēsturē. http://www.ieverojamiemediki.lv/b/belinkijs-maksis/