Nikolai Ivanovich Taratynov

Nikolai Ivanovich Taratynov was a Russian pathologist and military physician. He graduated from Kazan Federal University (then Kazan Imperial University) in 1912 and on September 12 that year was admitted to the Department of Anatomic Pathology as a Junior Assistant Professor. A Few months later, in 1913 he investigated a surgical case of cranial bone injury complicated in a male patient with a strange granuloma looking like tuberculosis. Dr. Taratynov revealed that the lesion was of mixed eosinophilic and mononuclear character, distinct from tuberculosis. He rejected a diagnosis of bone tuberculosis, suspected by surgeons, and coined the hypothesis that it was a new class of granolomata related to eosinophils. Also in the same paper he correctly predicted that eosinophils are the source of Charcot-Leyden crystals abundant in such granulomata. As we know now, the main constituent of these crystals is galectin-10, a product of eosinophils, interacting with eosinophilic lysophospholipases and their inhibitors.

After 1916 Taratynov became a Privatdozent of the same Department, than entered the Russian Army as a military physician. During the Civil War, which broke out in Russia in the end of 1917, Dr. Taratynov fought for the Reds, defending Soviet Power, and perished in 1919.

His daughter Ekaterina Nikolaevna Taratynova (Yaroshevskaya) (1917–2013) was a known paediatric pathologist and orthopaedist in the USSR. Almost 70 years of her career were affiliated with the G.I. Turner Research Institute of Paediatric Orthopaedics at Tsarskoye Selo, a suburb of Saint Petersburg. His grandniece, Olga Vyacheslavovna Taratynova is a renowned architect and art scientist, current director of the famous Museum-Preserve Tsarskoye Selo.   

We thank Leonid P. Churilov for information submitted.

N. I. Taratynov:
• On the question of relation between local eosinophilia and formation of Charcot-Leyden crystals in tissues. Kazanskiy Medicinskiy Zhurnal   1913; 1: 39–54. [In Russian]

S. J. Ackerman, l. Liu, M. A. Kwatia et al:
• Charcot-Leyden crystal protein (galectin-10) is not a dual function galectin with lysophospholipase activity but binds a lysophospholipase inhibitor in a novel structural fashion. J Biol Chem. 2002; 277(17): 14859-68.

• In memoriam: E.N. Yaroshevskaya. Vestnik Instituta im. G.I. Turnera 2013; 8(61): 3. [In Russian]

G. Artemenko: 
• Interview with Olga Taratynova: “Character tempered during excursions”. 
  http://33point6mlnclub.ru/index.php/nashi-gosti/50-olga-taratynova-direktor-gmz-tsarskoe-
  selo-kharakter-zakalyalsya-vo-vremya-ekskursij. Accessed 11 October 2014. [Rus]

G. Rykova:
• The Archaeology of Anxiety: The Russian Silver Age and its Legacy. 
  Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2007, 280 p.

L. P. Churiov, YuI Stroev, A. V. Kolobov, editors: 
•  Explanatory Dictionary of Selected Medical terms (Eponyms and Figurative Expressions). 
   St. Petersburg: ELBI-SPb Publ, 2010, p.234.