Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov

(click to enlarge)
Élie Metchnikoff. (credit: H. Roger-Viollet)

(born May 16, 1845, near Kharkov, Ukraine, Russian Empire — died July 16, 1916, Paris, France) Russian zoologist and microbiologist. In 1888 Louis Pasteur offered him a post at the Pasteur Institute, and he succeeded Pasteur as director in 1895. Working with starfish, he discovered amoebalike cells in their systems that engulf foreign bodies such as bacteria. He established that phagocytes (as he named these cells, using the Greek for "devouring cells") are the first line of defense against acute infection in most animals. This phenomenon, now known as phagocytosis, is fundamental to immunology. He shared a 1908 Nobel Prize with Paul Ehrlich.

For more information on Élie Metchnikoff, visit Britannica.com.

Russian–French zoologist and cytologist (1845–1916)

Metchnikoff was born at Ivanovka near Kharkov (now in Ukraine) and educated at Kharkov University. After holding posts under Rudolf Leuckart at Göttingen and Giessen, and under Karl Siebold at Munich, he taught zoology at Odessa and St. Petersburg. From 1873 to 1882 he was professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at Odessa.

He spent the years 1882–86 at Messina in Italy where, working on starfish larvae, he first noticed that certain nondigestive cells enclose and engulf foreign particles introduced into the body. These cells he called phagocytes and, extending his studies, he demonstrated that they also occur in humans – they are the white blood corpuscles. He realized that they are important in the body's defenses against disease, in engulfing bacteria and other foreign bodies in the blood. These advances were outlined in such publications as Intra-Cellular Digestion (1882), The Comparative Pathology of Inflammation (1892), and Immunity in Infectious Diseases (1905). For his work on phagocytosis, Metchnikoff was awarded, in 1908, the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine jointly with Paul Ehrlich.

In 1886 Metchnikoff was appointed director of the new bacteriological institute at Odessa; two years later he went to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, which he directed from 1895 to 1916, succeeding Pasteur himself.

In 1903 Metchnikoff succeeded, with Emile Roux, in transferring syphilis to apes. He also did research on cholera. His later years were largely concerned with a study of the aging factors in humans and means of inducing longevity – discussed in The Nature of Man (1904) and The Prolongation of Human Life (1910).

The Russian physiologist and bacteriologist Élie Metchnikoff (1845-1916) is best noted for his phagocytic theory of immunity. He also made contributions to comparative pathology, evolutionary embryology, and microbiology. E

On May 15, 1845, Élie Metchnikoff was born in the Ukrainian village of Ivanovka. At the age of 17 he entered Kharkov University; the following year he produced his first scientific work, "Some Facts from the Life of Infusoria" and he completed his studies in the natural sciences by the time he was 19. In 1864 he left for Germany to expand his knowledge of zoology, studying under Rudolf Leuckart, the father of modern parasitology.

Metchnikoff went on to the universities of Göttingen and Munich. He returned to Russia in 1867, received his master's degree in zoology after presenting his thesis, The History of the Embryonal Development of Sepiola, and was appointed dozent at Novorossiisk University in Odessa. In 1868 he successfully defended his doctoral thesis, The History of the Development of Nebalia, at the University of St. Petersburg.

Metchnikoff became professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at Novorossiisk University in 1870. His interest focused on comparative embryology, intracellular digestion of simple organisms, the role of phagocytes in the digestive process, and biological methods of controlling harmful insects. After resigning his position in 1882, he pursued his experiments in his home laboratory, studying pathological microbes. Four years later Metchnikoff, along with Nikolai Fedorovich Gamaleia, organized Russia's first and the world's second bacteriological station. Its function was to prepare vaccines for diseases afflicting man and beast, including rabies, foot-and-mouth disease, anthrax, and cholera. Encountering opposition, ignorance, and animosity from Odessa doctors, St. Petersburg newspapers, and interfering bureaucratic officials, Metchnikoff decided in 1887 to leave Russia forever.

In Paris, Metchnikoff met the ailing Louis Pasteur, and he was given the use of a personal laboratory and title of chief at the Pasteur Institute, where he began the most productive period of his career. The vaguely formulated concepts that Metchnikoff had conceived while investigating intracellular digestion eventually crystallized into his famous phagocytic theory of immunity. In 1883 he had revealed his theory of phagocytosis in "The Curative Forces of the Organism," delivered before the Seventh All-Russian Congress of Naturalists and Physicians in Odessa. The idea that phagocytes, a type of white blood cell, actually destroy living bacteria and other foreign matter and constitute a body's natural defense against infection was not favorably received by many scientists. However, by 1892 the accumulating experimental evidence supported Metchnikoff's theory of immunity. That year he also released his important work Comparative Pathology of Inflammation, and in 1903 his Immunity in Infectious Diseases appeared, soon becoming the classic text on immunology. For his many works on the processes of immunity he shared the Nobel Prize in 1908.

In 1903 Metchnikoff was appointed deputy director of the Pasteur Institute. About this time he began investigating old age. His ideas on the aging process appear in The Nature of Man (1903), Studies in Optimism (1907), and Forty Years' Search for a Rational Outlook (1913). He proposed the controversial theory of orthobiosis, which stressed "hygienic rules" for the prolongation of life. Despite frequent opposition to his theories, Metchnikoff became a renowned figure in the world of science and received many honors, awards, and titles. He died on July 16, 1916.

Further Reading

Still the best biography of Metchnikoff is the one by his wife, Olga Metchnikoff, Life of Élie Metchnikoff (trans. 1921). Biographical sketches appear in Edwin E. Slosson, Major Prophets of Today (1914), and Herman Bernstein, Celebrities of Our Time: Interviews (1924). An introductory work on immunology is Loyd Y. Quinn, Immunological Concepts (1968), and a fine standard text in this field is William c. Boyd, Fundamentals of Immunology (1943; 6th ed. 1966).

Additional Sources

Tauber, Alfred I., Metchnikoff and the origins of immunology: from metaphor to theory, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov
Born	16 May 1845 Ivanivka, Kupyanskyi Raion, Kharkiv Province, Russian Empire (now Ukraine)
Died	15 July 1916 (aged 71) Paris, France
Fields	Microbiology
Alma mater	Kharkiv University University of Giessen University of Göttingen Munich Academy
Known for	phagocytosis
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Medicine (1908)

Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (Ukrainian: Ілля Ілліч Мечніков) (16 May 1845 – 15 July 1916) was a Ukrainian microbiologist best remembered for his pioneering research into the immune system. Mechnikov received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1908, for his work on phagocytosis. He is also credited by some sources with coining the term "gerontology" in 1903, for the emerging study of aging and longevity.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early years 1.2 Research 1.3 Personal life 2 References 3 External links

Biography

Early years

Mechnikov was born in a village near Kharkiv in the Russian Empire, the youngest son of Ilya Mechnikov, a Russian Imperial Guard, and Emilia Nevakhovich Mechnikov; his maternal grandfather Lev Nevakhovich was the first Russo-Jewish writer and founder of the Haskala movement in Russia. His elder brother Lev became a prominent geographer and sociologist. Mechnikov was raised predominantly by his Jewish mother, and developed a passion for natural history. When Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species was published, Ilya vehemently undertook the survival of the fittest, testing and teaching it.

He attended Kharkiv University where he studied natural sciences, completing his four-year degree in two years. He then went to Germany to study marine fauna on the small North Sea island of Heligoland and then at the University of Giessen, University of Göttingen and then at Munich Academy. In 1867 he returned to the Russian Empire to the appointment of docent at the new University of Odessa, followed by an appointment at the University of St. Petersburg. In 1870 he returned to Odessa to take up the appointment of Titular Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy.

Research

Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, by Nadar.

Mechnikov became interested in the study of microbes, and especially the immune system. In 1882 he resigned his position at Odessa University and set up a private laboratory at Messina to study comparative embryology, where he discovered phagocytosis after experimenting on the larvae of starfish. His theory—that certain white blood cells could engulf and destroy harmful bodies such as bacteria—met with scepticism from leading specialists including Louis Pasteur, Behring and others.

Mechnikov returned to Odessa as director of an institute set up to carry out Pasteur's vaccine against rabies, but due to some difficulties left in 1888 and went to Paris to seek Pasteur's advice. Pasteur gave him an appointment at the Pasteur Institute, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Mechnikov's work on phagocytes won him the Nobel Prize in 1908. He worked with Émile Roux on calomel, an ointment to prevent people from contracting syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease.

Mechnikov also developed a theory that aging is caused by toxic bacteria in the gut and that lactic acid could prolong life. Based on his theory, he drank sour milk every day. He wrote three books: Immunity in Infectious Diseases, The Nature of Man, and The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies, the last of which, along with Metchnikoff's studies into the potential life-lengthening properties of lactic acid bacteria (LAB), inspired Japanese scientist Minoru Shirota to begin investigating the causal relationship between bacteria and good intestinal health, which eventually led to the worldwide marketing of Yakult and other fermented milk drinks, or probiotics.

Personal life

Mechnikov was married to his first wife Ludmilla Feodorovitch in 1863. She died from tuberculosis on 20 April 1873. Her death, combined with other problems, caused Mechnikov to unsuccessfully attempt suicide, taking a large dose of opium. He married again in 1875, to Olga Belokopytova who died in 1880 from typhoid. After her death, he made another failed attempt at taking his life by injecting himself with relapsing fever, from which he became very ill. He died in 1916 in Paris from heart failure.

References

• Microbe Hunters, by Paul De Kruif (1926)
• Schmalstieg, Frank C; Goldman Armond S (May. 2008). "Ilya Ilich Metchnikoff (1845-1915) and Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915): the centennial of the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine". Journal of Medical Biography (England) 16 (2): 96–103. doi:10.1258/jmb.2008.008006. PMID 18463079. 
• Breathnach, C S (September 1984). "Biographical sketches--No. 44. Metchnikoff". Irish medical journal (IRELAND) 77 (9): 303. ISSN 0332-3102. PMID 6384135. 
• Karnovsky, M L (May. 1981). "Metchnikoff in Messina: a century of studies on phagocytosis". N. Engl. J. Med. (UNITED STATES) 304 (19): 1178–80. ISSN 0028-4793. PMID 7012622. 
• Lavrova, L N (September 1970). "[I. I. Mechnikov and the significance of his legacy for the development of Soviet science (on the 125th anniversary of his birth)]". Zh. Mikrobiol. Epidemiol. Immunobiol. (USSR) 47 (9): 3–5. ISSN 0372-9311. PMID 4932822. 

External links

• Nobel biography
• Books written by I.I.Mechnikov (In Russian)

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