Mery Kostianovsky, retired pathologist and pioneering researcher, has died at 92

Mery Kostianovsky, 92, of Philadelphia, retired pathologist, pioneering researcher, scientist, author, and former assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson University, died Sunday, Aug. 18, of age-associated issues at Paul’s Run retirement community.

An expert in biology, and cell structure and function, at a time when female doctors and scientists were few, Dr. Kostianovsky excelled as a pathologist, research scientist, and teacher for more than 40 years in Israel, St. Louis, and Philadelphia. She was director of electron microscopy at what is now the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Jefferson and a prolific researcher in diabetes, AIDS, cancer, and other diseases.

She taught pathology classes and worked at Jefferson, consulted for the AIDS division of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and was a visiting scientist in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at what is now the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. One of her noteworthy papers, “Evolutionary Origin of Eukaryotic Cells,” was published in the peer-reviewed journal Ultrastructural Pathology, and her other research appeared in the journal Diabetes, the American Journal of Surgical Pathology, the Annals of Clinical and Laboratory Science, and other publications.

She studied and wrote about angiogenic and vasculogenic lesions, bacillary angiomatosis, and Kaposi’s sarcoma. She used state-of-the-art microscopes, some nearly twice her size, to examine tiny cells that resulted in monumental research that helped shape today’s medical landscape.

In the 1960s, she worked in the pathology unit at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv and then immigrated to St. Louis to do research and clinical pathology at Washington University. She was curious and collaborative wherever she worked and had “an infectious enthusiasm,” her family said in a tribute.

Dr. Kostianovsky was born in Concordia, Argentina, 268 miles north of Buenos Aires, and went on to work and study, live and contribute, in Israel and the United States. “She was a real trailblazer in more ways than one,” said her daughter, Debbie. “She literally blazed trails to new countries.”

A friend said in an online tribute: “What an amazing life story for a brilliant and caring woman/pioneer/physician.” Another friend said: “What a delightful woman she was.”

Mery Meilijzon was born Sept. 4, 1931. She was a gifted student in high school, and her daughter said: “She was serious, driven, and developing a lifelong insatiable intellectual curiosity, particularly for science and the natural world.”

She went on to the Universidad Nacional del Litoral in Rosario, Argentina, worked as a pathology teaching assistant while there, and earned a medical degree. She married fellow doctor Jorge Kostianovsky in 1957, and they moved to Israel in the early 1960s, and had daughter Debbie. The family left Israel for St. Louis in the mid-1960s, moving to Moorestown in the mid-1970s, and then Rittenhouse Square in 1994.

After medical school, she and her husband lived and worked as physicians in a kibbutz in the Negev of Israel. She retired from Jefferson in the early 2000s but still taught conversational Spanish and other classes at Temple University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

“She loved to explore wide-ranging subjects and impart her enthusiasm and love for the topics to her students,” her family said. Her son-in-law, Adam Schneider, said: “Her thirst for knowledge was boundless.”

Dr. Kostianovsky was outgoing and charming, and had lifelong friends in Argentina, Israel, St. Louis, South Jersey, and Philadelphia. She liked to cook and entertain, garden and travel.

She supported the Philadelphia Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, and the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences. Her grandson, Zak Schneider, noted her capacity to “empathize with and take a genuine interest in the opinions and thoughts of others.”

Her son-in-law said: “Mery was, at heart, all about her family.” Her daughter said: “She showed me that, conventions be damned, I could reach for the stars.”

In addition to her daughter, grandson, and son-in-law, Dr. Kostianovsky is survived by a sister, Ana, and other relatives. Her husband died in 2022.

Services were held on Aug. 25.

Donations in her name may be made to the Philadelphia Orchestra, 300 S. Broad St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19102 and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, 100 N. 20th St., Suite 405, Philadelphia, Pa. 19103.