Alexander Samoylov: Founding father of Russian electrophysiology.

Alexander Samoylov (Fig. 1) was born on 27 March, 1867, in Odessa. After completing gymnasium school, he began at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics in Novorossiisk University, but before graduating changed his mind in favor of medicine. He enrolled in the medical faculty at the University of Derpt (now Tartu) and graduated in 1892 as a Doctor of Medicine. In the same year, in St. Petersburg, he presented his thesis “On the Fate of Iron in the Animal Organism” (Uber das Schicksal des Eisens im thierischen Organismus, Diss., St. Petersburg, 1892), following which he joined the laboratory of the prominent Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov and became involved in his study of the physiology of digestion. In 1894, he accepted a job offer from another great Russian physiologist, Ivan Sechenov, in Moscow University, and there continued his research. Samoylov’s main academic interest, however, came to focus on the field of electrophysiology. According to his own account, this was inspired by an encounter with the noted Russian physiologist Nikolay Wedensky. In August 1883, the teenaged Samoylov heard a lecture by Wedensky at the Seventh Congress of Russian Natural Scientists and Physicians in Odessa, in which he reported on his studies of the processes of neural and muscular activity in animals using a telephone. That report so impressed the young Samoylov that he decided to devote himself to the study of these processes. However, unlike Wedensky, he chose to examine them by eye rather than by ear. What Wedensky had listened to, Samoylov wanted to see. At that time, the main research tool used to study electrophysiological processes was the capillary electrometer which Samoylov not only thoroughly explored but also improved in many ways by increasing its mobility, which allowed the curves representing the electrical processes in the heart of a frog to be recorded without lengthy correction and rectification, as had been required previously. He designed a photographic recorder with a fast-moving drum which could be used for reproducing electrical phenomena in the heart muscle on photographic film or paper. His electrograms, together with the atrial and ventricular mechanical curves, displayed all major phases of the cardiac cycle in a frog’s heart: the relationships between electrical and mechanical processes involved in the work of the heart, and the sequence of electrical processes in the atria and ventricles (Archiv f. Physiologie, 1906, Suppl. Bd.). In 1904 Samoylov met Willem Einthoven at the International Physiological Congress in Brussels and they soon developed an intense scientific cooperation and close friendship. In 1906, Samoylov started to work with the string galvanometer, a device invented by Einthoven which offered significantly greater capabilities than the capillary electrometer (Fig. 2). The delicacy and refinement of Samoylov’s technique in the use of the capillary electrometer Figure 1. Alexander F. Samoylov (1867–1930).