Mechnikov, Ilya Illyich (1845-1916)

Russian-born French zoologist who discovered the function of white blood cells and phagocytes (amoebalike blood cells that engulf foreign bodies). He also described how these 'scavenger cells' can attack the body itself (autoimmune disease). He shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine 1908. Mechnikov was born in Ivanovka, near Kharkov, and studied at Kharkov University and afterwards in Germany. He was professor of zoology and anatomy at Odessa 1867-82, when he moved to Messina in Italy to continue his research. He briefly returned to Odessa, but left Russia 1888 to join the Pasteur Institute in Paris, becoming director on Louis Pasteur's death 1895. While studying the transparent larvae of starfish, Mechnikov observed that certain cells surrounded and engulfed foreign particles that entered the bodies of the larvae. Later he demonstrated that phagocytes exist in higher animals, and form the first line of defence against acute infections. Mechnikov spent the last decade of his life trying to demonstrate that lactic acid-producing bacteria in the intestine increase a person's lifespan.