Jerzy Vetulani

Jerzy Adam Gracjan Vetulani (21 January 1936 – 6 April 2017) was a Polish neuroscientist, pharmacologist and biochemist, professor of natural sciences, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Learning, one of the most frequently cited Polish scientists in the field of biomedicine after 1965.

He was born on January 21, 1936 at the private gynecological hospital at Garncarska Street in Kraków, Poland as the son of Adam Vetulani, Professor and head of the Department of Church Law at the Jagiellonian University, and Irena Latinik, a biologist and daughter of Polish Army general Franciszek Latinik.

In 1938 his younger brother Jan was born.

The family occupied an apartment on the ground floor of the house of professors of the Jagiellonian University at Plac Inwalidów, employing a maid, cook and Olga Rutter, a child educator.

As Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Adam Vetulani took part in the defense war.

With his unit, he went to Romania and then to France, where he also fought on the front.

Eventually he was interned in Switzerland, where he spent the rest of the war organizing school camps for Polish soldiers.

The correspondence sent to the occupied Poland was signed by the Fraulein Kupfer alias.

After the German army entered Cracow, Irena Vetulani and her sons had to leave the apartment.

They were given forty-eight hours to move, with the possibility of keeping movable property.

They moved to the premises at Garncarska Street 4, where Józefa Onitsch, the wife of General Zygmunt Zieliński, gave them refuge.

The family was supported by Adam Vetulani's brother, Tadeusz, who has been living in Cracow during the war.

Thanks to her good knowledge of German, Irena took up her job as a translator in the spirit monopoly.

Jerzy and Jan remained in war years under the care of the mother who raised both sons "in a patriotic sense of honor".

Every Sunday at home there was a "mystery" and the family used to sing Polish Catholic patriotic Song Boże, coś Polskę.

In his childhood, Jerzy was a religious boy; he even served as an altar boy at St. Mary's Basilica.

Vetulani recalled the war years as interesting, full of fascinating activity and exploring the surrounding world, undermining the collective, martyrological picture of despair and misery.

Together with his younger brother and friend from the tenement house, Andrzej Mirocki, they founded an insect gatherer club.

For the most spectacular and precious part of their collection, they recognized a diverse collection of butterflies.

Mother never let children witness one of the street executions.

Jerzy began his education in 1942 and immediately entered the second class of secret sets led by Mrs. Iwiczowa, as he was already able to read and write.

From 1948 he attended the Henryk Sienkiewicz High School in Cracow, and then, after his liquidation, Bartłomiej Nowodworski High School, where he passed matura in 1952, obtaining a certificate with a distinction for best pupils.

Already as a teenager, Vetulani has completely walked away from religion.

He described himself from a young age as "a rebel who did a lot of things in spite of his parents."

At the age of twelve he enrolled in the Union of Polish Youth.

In his twenties, he was an announcer at Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret (1954–1961), and in his seventies he became a performer in the live magazine Gadający Pies (The Talking Dog, 2010–2015).

He publicly argued for the legalization of marijuana and wide depenalization of drugs for adult users, severely criticizing repressive drug policy of Poland and other countries.

He was an atheist.

An honorary fellow of Indian Academy of Neurosciences and Oxford Neurological Society, honorary doctor of the Medical University of Silesia and the Medical University of Łódź, he received numerous awards and state distinctions, including the Knight's Cross of Polonia Restituta.

At the time, Vetulani was a Research Associate Professor at the Vanderbilt University (1973–1975).

He first gained recognition for an early hypothesis of the mechanism of action of antidepressant drugs, suggesting in 1975 together with Fridolin Sulser that downregulation of beta-adrenergic receptors is responsible for their effects.

Associated with the Institute of Pharmacology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kraków, at which he was a professor, head of the Department of Biochemistry (1976–2006), deputy director for Science Affairs (1994–2002) and vice chairman of the Scientific Council (2003–2017), he published more than 240 original research papers.

In the Polish People's Republic, he was active in the democratic opposition and became a member of the Solidarity in 1980.

He headed the popular science magazine Wszechświat as its editor-in-chief (1981–2002), and was known for his popular lectures that gathered large audiences on various occasions.

In 1983, he received Anna-Monika Prize for research on the mechanisms of the electroconvulsive therapy.

Beside depression, his scientific interests included memory, addiction and neurodegeneration.

He was active in the field of popular science and became a recognizable science communicator in Poland.

In 2002 he unsuccessfully ran for the presidency of Kraków.

Throughout his life, he engaged in several cultural and social initiatives.

Since 2010 he ran a blog and social media channels, and authored several popular science books, some of which became bestsellers.