Jerzy Adam Gracjan Vetulani (; 21 January 1936 – 6 April 2017) was a Polish neuroscientist, psychopharmacologist and biochemist, professor of natural sciences, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Learning, between 1956 and 2017 employee at the Institute of Pharmacology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kraków, where he was 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 peer-review journals. While a Research Associate Professor at the Vanderbilt University, together with Fridolin Sulser in 1975 he formulated an early hypothesis of the mechanism of action of antidepressant drugs, suggesting that downregulation of beta-adrenergic receptors is responsible for their effects.Sulser F., Vetulani J.: Action of various antidepressant treatments reduces reactivity of noradrenergic cyclic AMP generating system in limbic forebrain, "Nature", 257, 1975. In 1983, he received for research on the mechanisms of the electroconvulsive therapy. Beside depression, his research interests included memory, addiction and neurodegeneration. According to Andrzej Pilc, he was one of the most frequently cited Polish scientists in the field of biomedicine between 1965 and 2001.
He was a popularizer and communicator of science, between 1981 and 2002 the editor-in-chief of the Wszechświat magazine. He ran popular lectures and authored several popular science books. Since 2010 he ran a blog Piękno neurobiologii (The Beauty of Neuroscience) and social media channels.
In the Polish People's Republic, he was an activist of the Union of Polish Youth, announcer at Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret (1954–1961) and a member of the Association of Atheists and Freethinkers. In 1978 he was registered as an unofficial collaborator of the Security Service. From 1980, he was a member of the Solidarity. For about half a century he maintained an acquaintance with Karol Wojtyła, who was chosen a pope in 1978.
He argued against the war on drugs, in favor of the legalization of marijuana and wide depenalization of drugs for adult users, criticizing Poland and other countries for their drug policies, that he considered repressive. A candidate in the Kraków presidential elections in 2002, he did not succeed. Between 2010 and 2015 he performed in the Gadający Pies (The Talking Dog) live magazine.
An honorary doctor of the Medical University of Silesia and the Medical University of Łódź, honorary fellow of Indian Academy of Neurosciences and Oxford Neurological Society, he received several dozen awards, including state distinctions, among them the Knight's Cross of Polonia Restituta.
Biography Social background
His father, Adam Vetulani, came from Sanok, and was a professor at the Jagiellonian University, head of the Department of Canon Law; the son of Roman Vetulani and Elżbieta née Kunachowicz (who came from an impoverished landowning family). He had daughter Kristine (born 1924), Jerzy's older sister. Jerzy Vetulani's mother, Irena Vetulani née Latinik, was a biologist and researcher at the Department of Comparative Anatomy at the Jagiellonian University, daughter of Franciszek Latinik, Polish Army General; and Helena née Stiasny-Strzelbicka. Jerzy Vetulani's uncles were: Kazimierz, Zygmunt and Tadeusz Vetulani, his closest aunt was Maria Vetulani (“Maryla”; 1895–1945), a bank clerk; his further aunts were Zofia, Maria and Cecylia Vetulani; his paternal cousins were Witold de Nisau, Wanda and Zygmunt Vetulani, and his maternal cousins were Irena and Andrzej Popiel, and Janusz and Jerzy Rieger.
1936–1952: Early years and rebellion
He was born on 21 January 1936 at the private gynecological hospital at Garncarska Street in Kraków, Poland. In 1938 his younger brother Jan was born. The family lived in an apartment on the ground floor of the , 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 Kraków, 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 Kraków during the war. Irena Latinik-Vetulani, thanks to her good knowledge of German, took up a job as a translator in the spirit monopoly. Jerzy and Jan Vetulani remained in war years under the care of their 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 Vetulani was a religious boy; he served as an altar boy at St. Mary's Basilica.
Jerzy 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 Jan and their friend from the tenement house, Andrzej Mirocki, they founded an insect gatherer club. They gathered a diverse collection of butterflies. Irena Latinik-Vetulani never allowed her children witness a street execution.
Jerzy Vetulani 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 , 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, Jerzy 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. He was removed from the organization as a result of a typo in the school newspaper article. In the text he mistakenly and unconsciously, instead of “the basis of socialism” (podstawy socjalizmu), he wrote “the washers of socialism” (podsrawy socjalizmu). Later he joined the Association of Atheists and Freethinkers. He belonged to the , a formation of idealistic communists who were striving for reform of Polish communist system that they considered defective.
1952–1973: Studies, cabaret, Institute of Pharmacology
In 1952 he began his studies in biology at the Jagiellonian University (specializing in animal physiology), which he completed in 1957, defending his thesis on the effects of ascorbic acid on rabbit blood. In March 1956, he began a volunteer internshipat at the Department of Pharmacology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (later renamed the Institute of Pharmacology), where he has been working since, until the end of his life. Janusz Supniewski was head of the department at that time. In 1957, after obtaining master's degree, Vetulani was hired as an assistant.
Later, also at the Jagiellonian University, he studied chemistry (specializing in theoretical chemistry). He graduated in 1963. As an exchange student he spent seven weeks in Swansea, where he worked at the British Iron and Steel Research Association. He rented a room at a senior Welsh marriage and studied English intensively; every day he bought an edition of Daily Mirror and underlined unknown words, that he later learned.
He was one of the founders and permanent regulars of the Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret. In the mid-1950s, together with a group of friends: Edmund Jarosz, Bronisław Chromy and Lala Skąpska, he took part in the demolition of the basement at Palace Pod Baranami, which soon became room for the cabaret. In 1958, when Piotr Skrzynecki left for Paris, Vetulani temporarily replaced him as a conference caller. It was in Piwnica that he met his future wife, Maria Pająk, whose appearance at the time he compared to Marina Vlady's. They married on 8 July 1963. Soon after that their sons Marek and Tomasz were born, respectively in 1964 and 1965. They also had four grandchildren.
In 1955–1962 he acted as a speaker at the Kraków Student Film Discussion Club. Jerzy Vetulani admitted that “it was a good thing” because “it taught him to speak short, interesting and fast”. In 1972 he was a scientific consultant for the film Illumination directed by Krzysztof Zanussi.
After the death of his brother, who drowned during a canoeing on the Dunajec River in 1965, he mobilized to begin work on his Ph.D. dissertation. He obtained Ph.D. degree in natural sciences in 1966 from Ludwik Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy of the Polish Academy of Sciences upon dissertation The action of isoxazole and pyrazole derivatives on the metabolism of the animal system prepared under the direction of Professor Józef Hano. In the same year went to Great Britain for one year Riker scholarship. In the UK he worked on mastering spectrofluorimetric methods at the University of Cambridge under the direction of Arnold Burgen. During his stay in Cambridge, he encountered Bożena Puchalska and Juliusz Hibner.
After returning to Poland he started work in the field of psychopharmacology under the direction of Jerzy Maj.
1973–1989: In the orbit of world science. Opposition After submitting a habilitation dissertation, he left to the United States for almost two years. There, he worked from 1973 to 1975 as Research Associate Professor at the Vanderbilt University. He gained international recognition after the discovery in 1975, with Fridolin Sulser, of β-downregulation by chronic administration of antidepressants and the formulation of β-downregulation hypothesis as a mechanism of action of antidepressants. The work on this subject, published by Vetulani and Sulser in Nature, became citation classic, receiving 580 vocations by 2007.
After his mother's death, he and his family decided to return to Poland. Vetulani received his habilitation degree in 1976 (upon work Neuroleptics, monoamine oxidase inhibitors and dopamine beta-hydroxylase inhibitors: their actions and synergies), an associate professor in 1983, and a professor in 1989. In 1976, he was appointed Head of the Department of Biochemistry at Institute of Pharmacology.
In the 1970s he translated several short stories by Ursula le Guin for magazine Przekrój. In Przekrój he also published short articles on his stay in the United States. Back in the 1960s he was offered regular work in Przekrój by its long-time editor-in-chief Marian Eile, but refused due to lack of possibility to combine scientific career with a full-time job as a columnist in a weekly.
Since 1978 he has regularly collaborated with the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR, National Research Council) in Rome. On behalf of the Institute of Pharmacology of the Polish Academy of Sciences he was a coordinator of the joint research program of his home Institute with the Istituto di Biology Cellulare and Neurobiology (IBCN). When visiting Rome, he usually received an audience with John Paul II, who was a student of his father and friend of the family. Also in 1978 he was registered as Security Service unofficial collaborator. His codename was "Laborant" and his operational number was 19856. From the 1970s he was in a close relationship with Sylwia Tomecka-Suchoń. They befriended Małgorzata and Jacek Ostaszewscy. Since the mid-1970s he suffered from glaucoma.