Illia Mechnikov (1845-1916) was a microbiologist born in Ukraine. He studied at the Kharkiv Male Gymnasium (1856-1862) and Karazin Kharkiv National University (1864). In Naples, the scientist conducted research on the embryonic development of marine invertebrates, for which he received the Carl Behr Prize (1867). He worked as an associate professor at Novorossiysk University (1867, since 1867 as a private associate professor). He resigned due to the harsh reactionary policy of the tsarist government and the right-wing professorship, and founded a private laboratory in Odesa (1886), the world's second bacteriological station. After that, he left Russia and emigrated to Paris (1887), where he worked in the laboratory of the Louis Pasteur University.
Awards:
1867 - Carl Behr Prize;
1902 - Honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences;
1906 - Copley Medal;
1908 - Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine;
1916 - Albert Medal (Royal Society of Arts).
The main areas of research of I. Mechnikov were the study of immunity, pathology, embryology (1866-1886), and microbiology. The scientist is the founder of the evolutionary theory of embryology, the discoverer of phagocytosis (1882), intracellular digestion (1865). He founded the phagocytic theory of immunity (1901) and the comparative theory of inflammation (1892), coined the term "gerontology" and developed the concept of aging. Numerous works of Mechnikov on bacteriology are devoted to the epidemiology of cholera, typhoid fever, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
The issues of aging occupied a significant place in Mechnikov's works. He believed that old age and death in humans occur prematurely as a result of self-poisoning with microbial and other poisons. Mechnikov attached the greatest importance to the intestinal flora. On the basis of these ideas, the researcher proposed a number of preventive and hygienic means of combating self-poisoning (sterilization of food, limiting meat consumption, etc.).
Mechnikov considered the Bulgarian lactic acid bacillus, Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, to be the main tool in the fight against aging and self-poisoning of the human body.
The scientist believed that the ultimate goal of the fight against premature old age was orthobiosis, the achievement of "a complete and happy cycle of life ending in a peaceful natural death." Based on Mechnikov's doctrine of orthobiosis, the interdisciplinary field of orthobiotics was formed in modern science. However, the scientist did not exclude the human factor - the influence of life's contradictions. He believed that each age has its own tasks and peculiarities, and death would not be perceived as tragic if we lived to the age of its natural acceptance.