Élie Metchnikoff

• 1. A Moldavian Noble Birth

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  Ilya Ilyich Mechnikoff entered the world on the 15th of May 1845 in a village within the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire. This location now sits inside modern-day Ukraine near Kupiansk Raion. He was the youngest of five children born to Ilya Ivanovich Mechnikov, an officer serving in the Imperial Guard. His mother Emilia Lvovna Nevakhovich came from a Jewish family and wielded significant influence over his early education. She pushed him toward natural sciences rather than medicine despite his initial interests. The family name Mechnikov translates from Romanian as sword or blade. It traces back to Yuri Stefanovi, a Chancellor who immigrated to Russia alongside Dimitrie Cantemir in 1711. For two and a half centuries the family lived in St. Petersburg and married into many Russian princely lines. His elder brother Lev would later become a prominent geographer and sociologist.

• 2. Citrus Thorns And Starfish Larvae

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  In 1882 Metchnikoff conducted experiments using starfish larvae at his private laboratory in Messina Sicily. He inserted small citrus thorns into the bodies of these tiny creatures to observe their reactions. Unusual cells gathered around the sharp points of the thorns he had placed inside them. These white blood cells surrounded the foreign object and attempted to destroy it. He realized that animals with blood possess cells that gather at sites of inflammation. This process became known as phagocytosis after Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Claus suggested the term. Claus was a Professor of Zoology at the University of Vienna. Metchnikoff delivered his findings at Odessa University in 1883. Leading specialists including Louis Pasteur and Emil von Behring initially met his theory with skepticism. Most bacteriologists believed white blood cells ingested pathogens only to spread them further through the body. Rudolf Virchow published support for this research in his Archiv für pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und für klinische Medicin.

• 3. From Odessa To The Pasteur Institute

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  Metchnikoff began his professional life as a docent at the newly established Imperial Novorossiya University in Odessa. At twenty-two years old he was younger than many of his students. A conflict with a senior colleague over attending scientific meetings forced him to transfer to Saint Petersburg in 1868. The environment there proved worse for his career ambitions. He returned to Odessa in 1870 to take up the appointment of Titular Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. Political turmoils following the assassination of Alexander II caused him to resign from Odessa University in 1882. He traveled to Sicily to establish a private laboratory in Messina. Later he returned to Odessa as director of an institute set up to carry out Louis Pasteur's vaccine against rabies. Difficulties arose during this tenure so he left in 1888. He went to Paris seeking advice from Pasteur who gave him an appointment at the Pasteur Institute. He remained at that institution for the rest of his life.

• 4. Sour Milk And The Search For Longevity

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  During the 1892 cholera epidemic in France Metchnikoff drank a sample of the disease himself. He never fell ill despite being equally exposed to the infection alongside others who suffered severely. Two volunteers tested showed one unaffected while the other almost died from the same exposure. He hypothesized that differences in intestinal microbes determined susceptibility to such diseases. People with plenty of beneficial bacteria would remain healthier than those without them. This observation led him to develop theories about aging caused by toxic bacteria in the gut. He attributed the longevity of Bulgarian peasants to their daily consumption of yogurt containing Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus. To validate his theory he drank sour milk every day throughout his remaining years. His scientific reasonings appeared in books like The Nature of Man published in 1903 and The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies released in 1907. He termed this concept orthobiosis though it became ignored until experimental evidence emerged in the mid-1990s.

• 5. Suicide Attempts And Atheist Beliefs

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  Metchnikoff married Ludmila Feodorovitch in 1869 but she died from tuberculosis on the 20th of April 1873. Her death combined with other personal problems caused him to attempt suicide using a large dose of opium. In 1875 he married his student Olga Belokopytova who suffered from severe typhoid in 1880. This tragedy led to his second suicide attempt where he injected himself with the spirochete of relapsing fever. Despite being baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church Metchnikoff eventually became an atheist. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution greatly influenced his worldview. He first read Fritz Müller's Für Darwin while studying at Giessen. From that text he became a supporter of natural selection and Ernst Haeckel's biogenetic law. His scientific works and theories were deeply inspired by Darwinism throughout his career.

• 6. The Nobel Prize And A Scientific Legacy

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  Paul Ehrlich shared the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Élie Metchnikoff for their work on immunity. The award recognized their complementary contributions to understanding how the body defends itself against disease. Metchnikoff had previously won the Karl Ernst von Baer prize in 1867 alongside Alexander Kovalevsky. He received an honorary degree from the University of Cambridge in Cambridge UK during his lifetime. The Royal Society awarded him the Copley Medal in 1906. Honorary memberships came from both the Academy of Medicine in Paris and the Academy of Sciences and Medicine in Saint Petersburg. He died in 1916 in Paris from heart failure. According to his will his body was used for medical research before cremation in Père Lachaise Cemetery. His cinerary urn now rests inside the Pasteur Institute library. Five different nations lay claim to his complex heritage today including Ukraine Russia Romania Moldova and Israel.