Valentyn Porfyrovych Yatsenko is a person who can be admired, a man who can be an example.
For the first time, we, freshmen of the medical faculty of the Kyiv Medical Institute, met the assistant professor V. P. Yatsenko as a lecturer. It is necessary to say that before him, the lectures were presented by the coryphaei of the Kiev histological school - academician M. I. Zazybin, professors K. S. Kabak and A. K. Kolomiitsev. When we knew that a new lecturer would read a lecture for us, we thought, “How can a young assistant professor compete with such great scholars?”. In 5-10 minutes we realized that he could. Valentyn Porfyrovych had his own personal style. He explained the microscopic structure of tissues and organs in a very detailed way, devoting considerable attention to the data from the electron microscopy, what he knew about not from the books, but from the active work in the laboratory of electron microscopy, which was intensively developing that time. Perhaps the material was slightly plain, but the lectures did not lack the humorous notes or examples of clinical practice.
The second step of our acquaintance is the participation of Valentyn Porfyrovych in scientific student conferences as the head of the morphological section. He carefully listened to all the reports and treated the speakers with due respect. In each report, he found positive moments, important facts, but at the same time, he criticized for the faults and advised how to remove them.
I did feel Valentyn Porfyrovych’s uncompromising stand when he was appointed as a reviewer of my master’s thesis. Received two higher education diplomas (medical and mathematical), he demanded from the candidate for a degree not only the accurate presentation of the histological material but also adequate mathematical processing of the received digital data. So I had to study out biostatistics instead of summer vacation...
After the dissertation defense, I began to prepare the PhD thesis and I went to Valentyn Porfyrovych for advice. At once, he suggested the direction of the scientific work which turned out to be very interesting and important in terms of clinical practice. And then I realized what it means to be a true scholar and a real Teacher. He was very demanding, occasionally he invited me to look at the histological specimens. Usually, those meetings began at 7.30 or 8.00, because after 9 o'clock he had other affairs that ended late in the evening. He could call after 23 and say: “I know it's not too late because creative people are not sleeping this time yet”. After my doctorate thesis defense, he was so glad as if he had just defended himself.
My creative relationships with this outstanding scholar, Teacher do not end for several decades. I want them to continue for a very long time. I wish Valentyn Porfyrovych inspiration, inexhaustible energy, and success. Thank you, my Teacher!