Turning the pages back...

March 25, 1839

Leonard Hirshman was born in Tukums, Latvia, on March 25, 1839, and after graduating from Kharkiv University in 1860, he traveled to France and Germany to complete his studies.

In 1868, he returned to his alma mater to teach, and seven years later he was promoted to full professor of the first ophthalmological department established at the university.

Prof. Hirshman founded the first eye clinic at the university in 1870 and personally financed two eye hospitals, a clinic and a school for the blind. From 1886, he served as president of the Kharkiv Medical Society.

As the crackdown that followed the revolution of 1905 grew more severe, Prof. Hirshman resigned from the university to protest the repression of students by the authorities.

In 1908, he founded Kharkiv's municipal eye hospital and began serving as its director. He published an array of works on the physiology of color perception, embolisms of retinal vessels, and the treatment of trachoma.

Prof. Hirshman died in Kharkiv on January 3, 1921. The Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute for Eye Diseases in the city was named in his honor.

Source: "Hirshman, Leonard," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988).

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 22, 1998, No. 12, Vol. LXVI

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