Élie Metchnikoff
Russian-French immunologist, embryologist, biologist
Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (15 May [O.S. 3 May] 1845 – 15 July 1916), gallicised and known in Western sources as Élie Metchnikoff, was a zoologist from the Russian Empire of Moldavian noble ancestry best known for his research in immunology (study of immune systems) and thanatology (study of death). He and Paul Ehrlich were jointly awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "in recognition of their work on immunity".
Mechnikov was born in a region of the Russian Empire that is today part of modern-day Ukraine to a Moldavian noble father and a Ukrainian-Jewish mother. He later moved to France. Given this complex heritage, five different nations and peoples lay claim to Metchnikoff. Despite having a mother of Jewish origin, he was baptized Russian Orthodox, although he later became an atheist.
Honoured as the "father of innate immunity", Metchnikoff was the first to discover a process of immunity called phagocytosis and the cell responsible for it, called phagocyte, specifically macrophage, in 1882. This discovery turned out to be the major defence mechanism in innate immunity, as well as the foundation of the concept of cell-mediated immunity, while Ehrlich established the concept of humoral immunity to complete the principles of immune system. Their works are regarded as the foundation of the science of immunology.
Metchnikoff developed one of the earliest concepts in ageing, and advocated the use of lactic acid bacteria (Lactobacillus) for healthy and long life.
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This entry incorporates text from “Élie Metchnikoff” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.