A medical man behind the iron curtan

              "The Tartar MENACE" was given to Dr. Frank N. Low of Louisiana State university medical school when he was in Cracow, Poland. Handing the tiny felt figurine to his colleague, Dr. Julian Aleksandrowicz of Cracow said, "It will protect you from your enemies and bring you good luck."
Dr. Low, professor of anatomy at LSU, carried The Menace with him all over Europe during the seven months he spent on sabbatical leave recently, doing a survey for the US Public Health Service. In that time he never as much as stubbed his toe.
Upon his return to New Orleans he gave the figurine to Dr. Marilyn Zimny, assistant professor of anatomy at LSU. Dr. Zimny is of Polish descent (her surname is Polish for "winter").
An hour later she strode into Dr. Low's office. "Say, that thing works pretty good," she commented. "I just got a research grant tor $28,000."
This was just one of the pleasant surprises Dr. Low had from his work in Russia and her satellites. "I had been led to expect great differences between the Iron Curtain countries and the rest of Europe," he says. "I was astounded at the similarities."
It took him 14 months of writing back and forth to get the necessary visas. But once he got there, he says, he was given 100 per cent co-operation.
Dr. Low is one *of the pioneer users of the electron microscope—the instrument that employs an electron beam instead of light and which advances man as far
beyond the light microscope as that instrument took him beyond the naked eye. In Europe the professor visited 150 laboratories in 20 countries, making a survey of the work being done in electron microscopy. He visited 16 Iron Curtain laboratories—in Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania. He says he found these countries about eight years behind America in the development of the electron microscope.
He had made up his mind that if the police states' police wanted to follow him, let 'em. If they wanted to go through his bags, likewise. The Tartar Menace included, he had nothing to hide. And, as far as he knows, they never did follow him or search his bags.
The Russians, he was very surprised to find, have a finely developed sense of humor.
"On the streets they appear rather stolid and disinterested," he says. "But their comic sense comes out in their opera, their ballet*and their plays." They even poke fun at the Communist ideology. One of the big hits running in Moscow when he was there was "Klop" (The Bedbug), a farce concerning a Rip Van Winkle sort of character who wakes up in a perfectly regulated society.
This was Dr. Low's second trip to Russia. The first was in 1934 when, hs says, "the people were so disorganized and half starved that there wasn't any room for humor/'
PHOTO:Dr. Low and LSU colleague, Dr. Marilyn Zimny, hold Tartar Menace, a figurine a friend gave Low in Poland
Good luck from Tartar Menace* was just one of many pleasant surprises this New Orleanian had from trip to Russia, satellites