Prof. Alfonsas Kaikaris – the founder of the Lithuanian Pharmacy Museum: his personality and scientific activity

Alfonsas Kaikaris (1922\u961997) was a professor of pharmacy at the Kaunas Medical Institute (now University), historian, museologist, founder of the Lithuanian Pharmacy Museum and of the field of pharmacy history in Lithuania. A. Kaikaris was born in \u8eagarė in 1922. He received his pharmacy diploma in 1947 and began work at the university. Following the reorganization of the university into two institutes, he went to work in the Medical Institute, where he served as the vice dean of the Pharmacy and Stomatology Department from 1957 until 1963. He began to collect pharmaceutical artifacts in 1957. In 1973, the Institute provided a small room in the attic for these objects and so a small pharmacy museum, the first in Lithuania, was born. Thanks to the hard work of A. Kaikaris and others, today this museum has grown into the Pharmacy and Medical History Center of Lithuania, whose work is widely known throughout Europe. A. Kaikaris was also a member of the board of the Lithuanian Scientific Society and head of the Society\u92s Pharmaceutical History Section from 1964 until he retired in 1987. He is the author of 67 scholarly papers and numerous popular articles and conference presentations. In 1988, he received the Paul Stradins Award from the Paul Stradins Medical History Museum in Riga, Latvia, and until his death in 1997 worked as a consultant to the Lithuanian Museum of the History of Medicine and Pharmacy