Ilya
Ilyich Mechnikov was born on May 16, 1845, in a village near
Kharkoff in Russia. He was the son of an officer of the Imperial
Guard, who was a landowner in the Ukraine steppes. His mother,
née Nevakhowitch, was of Jewish origin.
Mechnikov went to school at Kharkoff and was, even when he was a
little boy, passionately interested in natural history, on which
he used to give lectures to his small brothers and to other
children. He was at that time especially interested in botany and
geology. When he left school he went to the University of
Kharkoff to study natural sciences, and worked there so hard that
he was able to complete the four year course in two years.
Graduating at Kharkoff, he went, first to study marine fauna at
Heligoland, and then to the University of Giessen, where he worked under
Leuckart. Subsequently he went to the University of
Göttingen and the Munich Academy, where he worked in von
Siebold's laboratory. While he was at Giessen, he discovered, in
1865, intracellular digestion in one of the flatworms, an
observation which was to influence his later discoveries. At
Naples he prepared a thesis for his Doctorate on the embryonic
development of the cuttle-fish Sepiola and the Crustacean
Nelalia.
In 1867 he returned to Russia, having been appointed docent at
the new University of Odessa and from there he went to take up a
similar appointment at the University of St. Petersburg. But in
1870 he was appointed Titular Professor of Zoology and
Comparative Anatomy at the University of Odessa.
At St. Petersburg he met his first wife, Ludmilla Feodorovitch,
who suffered from tuberculosis so severe that she had to be
carried to church in a chair for the wedding. For five years
Mechnikov did all he could to save her life, but she died on
April 20, 1873. Broken by this loss, troubled by weak eyesight
and heart troubles and by difficulties in the University,
Mechnikov became, at this time, so pessimistic that he tried to
take his own life by swallowing a large dose of opium; but,
fortunately for himself and for the world, he did not die. It was
in Odessa, in fact, that he met his second wife, Olga, whom he
married in 1875. In 1880 his second wife had a severe attack of
typhoid fever and, although she did not die, Mechnikov, whose
health was still poor, again tried to take his own life. This
time, however, he decided, in order to save his wife and others
embarrassment, to do this by means of the scientific experiment
of inoculating himself with relapsing fever to find out whether
it was transmissible by the blood. The attack of relapsing fever
that followed was severe, but it did not kill him.
In 1882, after his recovery from this disease, Mechnikov resigned
his appointment at Odessa because of difficulties in the
University during the period of reactionary government which
followed the assassination of Alexander II.
He then went to Messina to continue, in a private laboratory he
set up there; his work on comparative embryology, and it was here
that he discovered the phenomenon of phagocytosis with which his
name will always be associated. This discovery was made when
Mechnikov observed, in the larvae of starfishes, mobile cells
which might, he thought, serve as part of the defences of these
organisms and, to test this idea, he introduced into them small
thorns from a tangerine tree which had been prepared as a
Christmas tree for his children. Next morning he found the thorns
surrounded by the mobile cells, and, knowing that, when
inflammation occurs in animals which have a blood vascular
system, leucocytes escape from their blood vessels, it occurred
to him that these leucocytes might take up and digest bacteria
that get into the body.
Returning to Odessa, Mechnikov visited Vienna on the way and
explained his ideas to Claus, Professor of Zoology there and it
was Claus who suggested the term phagocyte for the mobile
cells which act in this way. Ultimately in 1883, Mechnikov gave,
at Odessa, his first paper on phagocytosis. Apart from its
fundamental importance in immunology, the discovery had a marked
influence on Mechnikov himself. It completely changed his outlook
on life; he abandoned his pessimistic philosophy and determined
to find further proof of his hypothesis.
Some proof of it he found in the small fresh-water Crustacean
Daphnia, in which he found that fungal spores which
attacked it were themselves attacked by the phagocytes of the
crustacean. He then studied anthrax bacilli and found that the
more virulent strains of these were not attacked by the
phagocytes, while the less virulent strains were.
During this period Mechnikov had been appointed Director of an
Institute established in 1886 in Odessa to carry out Pasteur's
vaccine treatment of rabies, but there was much local hostility
to this treatment. Mechnikov found that, partly because he was
not a medical man, circumstances became so difficult that, in
1888, he left Odessa and went to Paris to ask Pasteur for his
advice. Pasteur gave him a laboratory and an appointment in the
Pasteur Institute. Here he remained for the rest of
his life.
Apart from his work on phagocytosis, Mechnikov had, during his
earlier period of scientific activity, published many papers on
the embryology of invertebrates. These included work on the
embryology of insects, published in 1866, and, in 1886, his
studies of the embryology of Medusae. At the Pasteur Institute in
Paris Mechnikov was engaged in work associated with the
establishment of his theory of cellular immunity, which, like
many great advances in science, encountered considerable
hostility. He published, during this period, several papers and
two volumes on the comparative pathology of inflammation (1892),
and his treatise entitled L'Immunité dans les Maladies
Infectieuses (Immunity in infectious diseases, 1901). In 1908
he was awarded, together with Paul
Ehrlich, the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
In addition to this work he, together with Roux, proved that
syphilis can be transmitted to monkeys. Later he took up the
study of the flora of the human intestine and developed a theory
that senility is due to poisoning of the body by the products of
certain of these bacteria. To prevent the multiplication of these
organisms he proposed a diet containing milk fermented by bacilli
which produce large amounts of lactic acid and for a time this
diet became widely popular.
Mechnikov received many distinctions, among which were the
honorary D. Sc. of the University of Cambridge, the Copley Medal of the
Royal Society of which he was a Foreign Member, the honorary
memberships of the Academy of Medicine in Paris, and the
Academies of Sciences and of Medicine in St. Petersburg. In
addition, he was a corresponding member of several other
societies and a Foreign Member of the Swedish Medical
Society.
Photographs taken of him when he was working at the Pasteur
Institute show him with long hair and an unkempt beard. It is
said of him that at this time he usually wore overshoes in all
weathers and carried an umbrella, his pockets being overfull with
scientific papers, and that he always wore the same hat, and
often, when he was excited, sat on it.
From 1913 onwards Mechnikov began to suffer from heart attacks
and, although he rallied for a time and recovered from the
distress which the 1914-1918 War caused him, he died on July 16,
1916.
From Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
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