Yushchenko – Chernavkin Radio Method: A Milestone in the History of Scientific Institutionalization of Biotelemetry

Abstract

A novel method of dynamic biotelemetry (“radio method”) was first developed in the USSR in the early 1930s. This method enabled studying physiological parameters of biological objects in their natural environment, and implied creating a technical complex consisting of a device placed on the biological object under study to capture a particular physiological parameter, radio equipment for wireless (only) transmission and reception the respective parameters, and the means for recording radio-transmitted data. The author of the idea of radio method was A. A. Yushchenko, head of the physiological department of the Communist Academy’s Institute of Higher Nervous Activity; its technical implementation was achieved by L. A. Chernavkin, junior researcher and engineer who worked at the Institute; and was used as a research method in the studies carried out by the Department members V. Ya. Kryazhev (1931) and S. A. Kharitonov (1932, 1937). In animal experiments radio method enabled obtaining radically new data about reflexes and higher nervous system activity. The attempts were made to use this method in human physiology research (inter alia, at the specially created laboratory at the I. V. Stalin First State Automobile Plant). Studies in the field of radio method were terminated because of Yushchenko’s untimely death and objective technical complexities. The next stage in the development of biotelemetry only began in the late 1940s.