In memoriam: Professor Olga Mioduszewska

We are deeply saddened by the news of the tragic death of Professor Olga Mioduszewska, who was an outstanding pathomorphologist and hematopathologist. She co-created modern Polish pathology and the Pathology Department at the Institute of Oncology; she also made very important contribution to European and global hematopathology. She died on June 14th, 2018 at the age of 91 years, still full of life, despite many health problems with which she fought. One year ago she celebrated her 90th birthday with a group of friends, remembering shared moments.
Olga Mioduszewska was born on February 3, 1927 in Vilnius as the daughter of Olga and Zenon Or³owski, in the family that had long tradition in medicine. Her father was Internal Medicine Professor at the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius and then pro-rector of this University. She finished her school education in Vilnius.
Olga Mioduszewska studied medicine at the Faculty of Medicine Lodz University 1945-1950 and started to work at the Department of Pathology already in 1949. She obtained the specialization in pathology in 1957. In 1958 Olga Mioduszewska received, as the second Polish scientist the Rockefeller Stipend award to carry research at the Finney-Howell Cancer Research Laboratory at the John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md, USA, under guidance of prof. George O. Gey. In 1962 she completed PhD with the thesis entitled “Influence of hormones on the malignant melanoma cells in culture” for which she received the Polish Academy of Sciences award 1963. She became Associate professor in 1965 at Lodz Oncology Center after completing the thesis “Influence of hormones on the breast cancer cells in culture”. During the period between 1963 and 1971, she was the Head of the Histopathological Laboratory of the Oncology Center in Lodz.
From September 1971 she was associated with the Oncology Center – Maria Sklodowska-Curie Institute in Warsaw, where she was the Head of the Special Techniques Laboratory. In 1978 at the conference in Katowice, Olga Mioduszewska met three famous hematopathologists who revolutionized lymphoma classifications: Professors Robert Lukes (California, USA), Robert Collins (Tennessee, USA) and Karl Lennert (Kiel, Germany). She developed a close collaboration with all of them and was the first pathologist in Poland to introduce the immunopathological basics of lymphoma classification. She was the first representative of Central European Countries and the first woman in the...


View full text...