History
The institute was opened in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1923, and was a bacteriology laboratory. Its founder, Prof. George Eliava, was not aware of bacteriophages until 1919-1921. In those years he met Felix d'Herelle during a visit to the Pasteur Institute in Paris. There, Eliava was enthusiastic about the potential of phage in the curing of bacterial disease, and invited d'Herelle to visit his laboratory in Georgia.
D'Herelle visited Tbilisi twice in 1933-34, and agreed to work with Prof. Eliava. It has been suggested that d'Herelle became enamored of the communist idea. In 1934, Joseph Stalin invited d'Herelle to the institute in Tbilisi; he accepted and worked there for about 18 months. D'Herelle dedicated one of his books to Stalin, The Bacteriophage and the Phenomenon of Cure, written and published in Tbilisi in 1935.
D'Herelle had planned to take up permanent residence in Tbilisi and had started to build a cottage on the grounds of the Institute; it would later house the KGB's Georgian headquarters.
However, the collaboration between the two scientists was not to be. Around the time d'Herelle was to take up residence, in 1937 George Eliava was executed and denounced as an enemy of the people. D'Herelle fled from Tbilisi and, some believe, never returned. Another account states that he was in Paris at the time of Eliava's execution, and decided not to return. D'Herelle's book was also banned from distribution.
In spite of this development, the institute did not change its practical specialization, and continued its activity in the field of bacteriophage research. In 1938, the Institute of Bacteriophage Research and the Institute of Microbiology & Epidemiology (founded separately in 1936) merged, and the Institute of Microbiology, Epidemiology and Bacteriophage was formed. It existed until 1951 and was authorized by the People's Commissary of Health of Georgia. After 1951, it came under the auspices of the All-Union Ministry of Health and was renamed The Institute of Vaccine and Sera.
Since its inception, the institute was composed of a combination of industrial and scientific (research) departments. In 1988 the Institute was rearranged again and emerged as the Scientific Industrial Union "Bacteriophage" (SIU "Bacteriophage"). Around that time, its scientific portion was renamed the George Eliava Research Institute of Bacteriophage.
Based on the original intentions of D'Herelle and Eliava, the Bacteriophage Institute retained its leadership among other institutes of similar profile over the years. Teimuraz Chanishvili was the leader of the scientific part of the institute for over 30 years, until his death in August 2007.
Read more about this topic: George Eliava Institute
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