Liidia Poska-Teiss, esimene eestlasest arengubioloog. Liidia Poska-Teiss: the first Estonian developmental biologist
Creators: name: Lõbu, Terje
name: Kalling, Ken
Publisher: name: Tartu Ülikooli ajaloo küsimusi
Year: 2019

description: Liidia Poska Teiss (1888–1956) came from an outstanding Estonian family. Her uncle was the first Estonian foreign minister who signed the peace treaty with Russia in 1920 that won Estonia de facto independence. Poska-Teiss received her university-education in St. Petersburg at the Higher Women’s Courses in Natural Sciences of M. A. Lokhvitskaya- Skalon. Already at the third year of her studies she started to work as an aid of a histology assistant at the laboratory of Professor Valentin Dogel (1882–1955) at the University of St. Petersburg. She continued working as an assistant after graduating from the institution in 1914. In 1917 she also became an assistant at the psycho-neurological institute of Vladimir Bekhterev (1857–1927). In St. Petersburg, Poska-Teiss started her scientific career, which enveloped the fields of histology, cytology and embryology. In particular, she worked with the epicardium of the heart tissue (formation of nuclei in epithelial cells). After the Russian Revolution of 1917 Poska-Teiss returned to Estonia and applied for a position at the University of Tartu opened in 1919 as an Estonian-language facility of higher education. She became an assistant at the Zoology Department of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. She continued her scientific research and visited Berlin in 1923, where she studied under the instruction of the histologist Rudolf Krause (1865–1939) and embryologist Franz Keibel (1861–1929). In this period, her main topic was karyology— the study of the structure and function of cell nuclei. In 1928 Poska-Teiss got an assistant’s position at the Histology Department of the Medical Faculty. The head of the department Harry Kull (1886–1933) was an outstanding histotechnician and Poska- Teiss also contributed to this field. In 1930 Poska-Teiss defended her Ph.D. thesis titled Spermatogonien von Bufo vulgaris Laur, und ihr Vergleich mit larvalen somatischen Zellen desselben Tieres, contributing to the contemporary discussions on the issue of the persistence of chromosomes. In 1938 Poska-Teiss applied for the position of assistant professor. The following year she was granted the position of an assistant professor in histology. Her further career was interrupted by the Soviet occupation and annexation of Estonia in 1940, which was soon (in 1941) followed by the German occupation. The latter ended in 1944 when the Soviet authorities returned. Poska-Teiss was named a professor at the Department of Darwinism and General Biology. In the following years, the career of Poska-Teiss was controversial. On the one hand, the Soviet system supported her career, as women were promoted according to official rhetoric. On the other hand, due to her scientific specialisation she became a target of ideological attacks caused by Stalinist campaigns of pseudo-teachings in biology (in broad terms known as Lysenkoism). In such circumstances, Poska-Teiss suffered under a lot of mental stress in the final years of her life. Yet, she invoked interest in her scientific field among many disciples, who have later made Estonian cell and molecular biology world-famous.
description: Tartu Ülikooli ajaloo küsimusi, No 47 (2019): Kas me sellist rahvusülikooli tahtsime?