Short biography of Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov: history of life, discoveries, achievements and features of activity

Mechnikov Ilya Ilyich, whose biography (life story) is very interesting, is a Russian embryologist, immunologist and bacteriologist. This scientist gave us many important discoveries in science. In 1908 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. However, this is only one of the many achievements of Ilya Ilyich. A short biography of Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov will acquaint you with the life and main discoveries made by this scientist.

Both domestic and foreign biologists, immunologists and physiologists have heard about Ilya Ilyich. Mechnikov worked productively both as a zoologist, as an embryologist, and as a pathologist. He is one of the creators of evolutionary embryology. In addition, he deserves credit for the discovery of intracellular digestion and phagocytosis, and much more. All this is more than enough for many of you to be interested in the short biography of Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov.

The origin of the future scientist

He was born in the village of Ivanovka (not far from Kharkov, Ukraine) in 1845. His father was an officer of the tsarist secret police Ilya Ivanovich, who served in St. Petersburg. Before moving to the Ukrainian estate, this man lost a significant part of his wife's dowry and family property. Emilia Mechnikova (nee-girl - nevahovich) was the mother of Ilya Ilyich. The father of this woman was a rich Jewish writer Lev Nevahovich. Emilie helped her son, the last of 5 children, to choose a career as a scientist.

Education in the Lyceum and University

A short biography of Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov is marked by the fact that he showed interest in natural science since childhood. The future scientist excellently studied at the Kharkov Lyceum. At the age of 16 Mechnikov wrote an article in which criticism of the textbook on geology was presented. It was printed in a Moscow magazine. After graduating from high school with a gold medal (in 1862), Ilya Ilyich decided to study the structure of the cell. He did this for Wurzburg University. Surrendering to the mood, Ilya Mechnikov went to Germany. He did not even know that it was only after six weeks that classes began. Caught in a foreign city alone, without knowledge of German, Ilya decided to return to Kharkov University. He brought from Germany the translation of the book "The Origin of Species by Natural Selection" by Charles Darwin. Mechnikov, after reading this book, became a supporter of the theory of evolution.

The first discoveries of Mechnikov

Ilya Ilyich completed a 4-year university course in Kharkov in 2 years. Already familiar with the structure of lower animals (sponges, worms and other invertebrates), Ilya Mechnikov realized that in more highly developed organisms, in accordance with the Darwinian theory, similarities with the low-organized, those that are their ancestors, should be found in the structure. Embryology of vertebrates at that time was much better developed than embryology of invertebrates. Ilya Mechnikov devoted the next 3 years to the study of a little-researched area. He traveled to different parts of Europe: he visited about. Helgoland in the North Sea, in the laboratory of R. Leikart near Frankfurt, in Naples, where he collaborated with Alexander Kovalevsky, a young Russian zoologist. Work, where they showed that in multicellular animals the embryonic sheets are homologous (their structure is identical), as it should be in the related common origin of forms, brought scientists the prize of KE von Baer. By this time Mechnikov was only 22 years old. Because of the great strain, his eyes began to hurt at that time. Mechnikov was worried about this ailment for the next 15 years. It prevented him from working with a microscope.

Receiving a doctoral degree, lecturing and participating in an expedition

After defending the dissertation on the embryonic development of crustaceans and fish, held in 1867, received his doctoral degree Mechnikov Ilya Ilyich. A brief biography of his future years is connected with the Russian capital, as he defended himself at the St. Petersburg University and began teaching comparative anatomy and zoology here. For 6 years he lectured at this university. Then Ilya Mechnikov became a member of an anthropological expedition. Together with other researchers he went to the Caspian Sea, to the places where the Kalmyks live. The purpose of the expedition is anthropometric measurements, allowing Kalmyks to be attributed to the Mongoloid race. Mechnikov on his return was elected to the Odessa Novorossiysk University as an assistant professor.

Life in Odessa and moving to Italy, the discovery of phagocytes

Odessa, located on the Black Sea coast, was an excellent place to study a variety of marine animals. Students loved Ilya Ilyich, but the growing political and social unrest in Russia at the time oppressed the scientist.

In 1881, after the assassination of Alexander II, the reactionary actions of the new government intensified. After resigning, Mechnikov moved to Italy (in Messina). Here, as he recalled, a turning point in his scientific activity took place. Mechnikov became a pathologist. The discovery, which changed his life dramatically, is connected with the observations of Ilya Ilyich behind the larvae of the starfish. The scientist noticed that the mobile cells of these living beings surround the foreign bodies, and then absorb them. A similar phenomenon is observed in the inflammatory reaction of the human body. If the alien body is sufficiently small, the wandering cells (Mechnikov called them phagocytes) completely absorb the alien.

The theory of Mechnikov

Mechnikov was not the first to notice that leukocytes in the bodies of animals devour organisms that invaded their boundaries, including bacteria. However, it was believed that the observed absorption process mainly serves to spread a foreign substance through the body through the circulatory system. Ilya Ilyich followed another explanation. On what was happening, he looked with the eyes of the embryologist. Movable phagocytes in the larvae of sea stars do not just absorb the alien object. They also destroy other tissues, if the body no longer needs them. Human leukocytes and marine star phagocytes are homologous embryologically, since both occur from the mesoderm. From this scientist concluded that, like phagocytes, leukocytes perform a sanitary or protective function. Then Ilya Ilyich demonstrated how these wandering cells act in transparent water fleas.

Mechnikov later wrote that the disease, according to this hypothesis, is a struggle between the phagocytes of the organism and the microbes that came from outside. However, for a number of years Ilya Ilyich's ideas were not perceived by scientists. In this respect, in general, was typical of such an outstanding figure as Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, biography. Great scientists often do not accept the scientific community, and it takes time for their ideas to receive a well-deserved recognition. In this sense, Mechnikov was even lucky - his merits were appreciated by the awarding of the Nobel Prize, though not immediately. But it often happens that fame for great people comes only after death.

Return to Odessa

Mechnikov returned to Odessa in 1886. He headed the Bacteriological Institute, newly organized. Here, the scientist began to investigate the action of monkey, rabbit and dog phagocytes on microbes that cause recurrent typhus and erysipelas. His staff also worked to create vaccines against anthrax sheep and cholera chickens. Mechnikov had to face newsmen who craved sensations, as well as with local doctors who reproached him for lack of medical education. In 1887, Ilya Ilyich decided to leave Russia again. A short biography of Ilya Mechnikov continues already in the French capital.

Life in Paris, continued study of phagocytes

In Paris, he met with Louis Pasteur. The French scientist invited him to the post of head of a new laboratory, established at the Pasteur Institute. For the next 28 years, Mechnikov worked here, continuing to study phagocytes.

Mechnikov's works, made in Paris, made a great contribution to a number of fundamental discoveries about the nature of the immune response. Jules Bordet, one of the pupils of Ilya Ilyich, showed the role of complement in the destruction of microbes (a substance found in normal blood serum). It makes them more vulnerable to phagocytes.

Other ideas of Mechnikov

When ideas about the function of leukocytes and the significance of phagocytosis were sufficiently spread among immunologists, Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov began to develop other ideas. Biographical scientific data on it include a number of interesting facts. In particular, he tackled the problems of aging and death. Mechnikov published in 1903 a book on "orthobiosis," that is, the ability to live right. The work is called "Studies on the nature of man." It talks about the importance of food, and also substantiates the necessity of having a lot of sour-milk products in the diet, in particular, curdled milk, fermented with the use of a Bulgarian stick. Ilya Mechnikov's name is also associated with the popular way of making kefir. This method became commercially successful, but the scientist did not receive any money for his discovery.

A brief biography of Ilya Mechnikov was marked by a landmark event in 1908. It was then that for his works on immunity he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. It was received jointly by Paul Erlich and Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, microbiologists. Ilya Ilyich's biography continues with events in his personal life.

Personal life of Mechnikov

In 1869, the scientist married Lyudmila Fedorovich, a patient with tuberculosis. The spouses had no children. When his wife died four years later, Mechnikov attempted suicide by taking morphine. While working at the Odessa University, in 1875, he met Olga Belokopytova, a 15-year-old student, and married her. After she became infected with typhoid fever, Ilya Ilyich again made an attempt to settle scores with life, now with the help of an injection of causative agents of recurrent typhus. However, after a hard illness, he recovered. Moreover, the disease lessened the pessimism so characteristic of this scientist, and also caused an improvement in vision. Mechnikov and his second wife had no children. However, after Olga's parents died, the Mechnikovs began to patronize the three sisters and her two brothers.

Death of a great scientist

Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov: biography, family, activities - we have briefly reviewed all this. It remains only to say that Ilya Mechnikov died July 15, 1916 in Paris after a series of myocardial infarctions. Thus, he lived to 71 years.

So, a short biography of Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov has acquainted you with the main milestones of his life and the most important achievements. Did you want to continue your acquaintance with the great scientist? Of course, this deserves Mechnikov Ilya Ilyich. A brief biography is clearly insufficient to study the personality and ideas of a scientist of this magnitude. Not only in our country, but throughout the world, Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov enjoys authority. Biographies of physicians, even the most famous, rarely compare with him on achievements.