[Professor Ivan Tarchanoff]

Napoleon Cybulski, generally recognised the father of Polish physiology, was first a student and later an assistant of Tarchanoff at the Chair of Medical and Surgical Physiology of the Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy in St Petersburg. A Professor of the Jagiellonian University himself (whose nomination, by the way, was supported among others on the recommendations from Tarchanoff), Cybulski was a co-discoverer of adrenaline, and one of the first researchers in the world to make an EEG recording. Tarchanoff's ties with Poland are far greater than his biographers would admit. He was more than just a teacher and a friend of Cybulski: after being dismissed from the Academy in St Petersburg , the scientist not only used to visit Kraków but published his scientific works here, built a house in the vicinity of the city, and here he died on 24th August 1908. His wife, Helena Antokolska-Tarchanoff was active in Kraków's artistic circles. Hints suggesting that Tarchanoff planned to spend the rest of his life in what at the time was Galicia are plenty.