Danchakova, Vera Mikhailovna

Vera Danchakova was born in St. Petersburg . Contrary to the wishes of her parents, she chose the natural sciences and in 1906 received a medical degree at the University of Lausanne , then she confirmed it and defended her thesis "On the question of the neurofibrillary apparatus of nerve cells and its changes in rabies" ^[2] at Kharkov University and St. Petersburg Medical university . Thus, she became the first woman in Russia to receive a doctorate in medical sciences .

Danchakova marries Evgeny Grigorovich and leaves for Europe, where in 1902 their daughter, Vera Evgenyevna Danchakova, is born to them. Danchakova-daughter graduated from Columbia University and married in 1928 to the famous Soviet mathematician and mechanic Mikhail Lavrentiev . Their son is a Russian mathematician, M.M. Lavrentiev , grandson of V.M. Danchakova ^[3] .

He emigrates to the USA in 1915, becomes a New York correspondent for the Moscow newspaper Morning of Russia , helps the American Aid Administration , publishes articles on difficulties in the work of Russian scientists during the First World War and the Revolution. During the famine in the Volga region, she called for sending parcels of food to Russia. At that time, a Russian émigré society was founded in New York, and Danchakova and her husband arranged evenings. Vera Mikhailovna played the piano at the musical evenings of Juan and Olga Kodin ^[4] , and also looked after their daughter, Karolina Kodina, later Lina Prokofieva , wife of Sergei Prokofiev .

In 1908, Danchakova became an assistant professor at the Department of Histology and Embryology at Imperial Moscow University - the first female professor in Russia. However, she was not allowed to become a private assistant professor because of gender. After emigrating to the United States, she works at Rockefeller University in New York. He then teaches at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. At the department of Thomas Morgan, she studied the mechanisms of restoration of blood cells. According to M. Likhtman, Danchakova first used in her published article entitled “The Origin of Blood Cells. The development of hematopoietic organs and the regeneration of blood cells from the perspective of the monophyletic school ”in 1916, the term“ stem cell ”. But one can rather say that it popularized the term - it first appeared in 1909 in the work “Lymphocyte as a common stem cell of various blood elements in embryonic development and post-fetal life of mammals” by histologist Alexander Maximov ^[5] .

In 1926, Danchakova was invited to return to the Soviet Union to organize a biological institute ^{[6] [7]} .

In 1934, Danchakova left Columbia College and until 1937 she worked at the Department of Histology and Embryology of the Lithuanian University of Medical Sciences .