Professor Giorgi Eliava and the Eliava Institute of Bacteriophage.

Abstract

In the history of medicine little is known about Prof. Giorgi (George) Eliava, who must be recognized as one of the central figures in the story of bacteriophages. Today it may be said without any exaggeration that without the support that Eliava provided to Felix d'Herelle, much of our knowledge about phage therapy would never have been acquired. Eliava played a central role in developing and promoting therapeutic uses of bacteriophages in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and beyond, and it was largely due to his efforts-and the institute that he established-that phage therapy survived in Soviet Georgia during the Cold War when it was largely abandoned in the West. Because of his progressive thinking, tireless activities, and close collaborations with many foreign scientists, including d'Herelle, Eliava became a victim of Stalin's regime in 1937, declared an "Enemy of the People" and executed. Most photographs and documents belonging to Eliava were destroyed by the Committee for State Security (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti), so it is difficult to ascertain many of the details of his life, and his scientific activities are largely unknown. His memory was restored only after the reassessment of the outcomes of the Great Terror and Stalin's regime in later periods. In this article, we bring the remarkable but little-known story of Giorgi Eliava to a wide readership and thus pay tribute to his talent and his dedication to science, and celebrate his contributions to phage research and phage therapy.