Dmitri Iossifowitsch Ivanovsky

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Dmitri Iwanowski (around 1910)

Dmitri Ivanovsky ( Russian Дмитрий Иосифович Ивановский ; born October 28 . Jul / 9. November  1864 greg. In Nisi , today in the Leningrad Oblast , † 20 April 1920 in Rostov-on-Don ) was a Russian biologist and founder of modern virology .

Life

Ivanovsky, a student of Andrei Sergejewitsch Faminzyns , studied science at the St. Petersburg University until 1888 . In 1890 he became an assistant at the Botanical Laboratory of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences . From 1895 to 1901 he was a private lecturer at St. Petersburg, from 1901 to 1915 professor at Warsaw and from 1915 professor at Rostov University.

In 1887 he dealt with the mosaic disease of the tobacco plant for the first time . The biologist Adolf Mayer (1843–1942) had already recognized the infectious nature of the mosaic disease in 1886, but could not identify the pathogen. In order to characterize the pathogen causing this plant disease, Iwanowski pressed the infectious plant sap through bacteria-proof filters. Nevertheless, the juice remained infectious and its infectivity was not reduced by diluting it over several passages of infected plants. From this he concluded that it had to be an animated agent that was invisible under the light microscope and that it was not a dilutable poison. He alternately called the pathogen “microbe” or “virus”. He was the first to assign the term virus to a pathogen - the tobacco mosaic virus - that is still valid today. Ivanovsky is therefore considered to be the founder of modern virology.

He published his data in 1892 in little-noticed scientific journals in St. Petersburg and Warsaw. Ivanovski's work was independently confirmed in 1899 by Martinus Beijerinck (1851-1931).

Honors

Soviet postage stamp (1964).
  • In recognition of his special services to virology, the Institute of Virology of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR was named after Ivanovsky in 1950. At the same time, the Iwanowski Prize of the Academy of Medical Sciences was donated, which is awarded every three years for the best scientific work in the field of virology.
  • The Soviet Post issued a special stamp on October 31, 1964 on the occasion of Ivanovsky's 100th birthday .

Works

  • DI Ivanovskij: O dvuch boleznjach tabaka. Tabacnaja peplitsa. Mozatcnaja bolezn´ tabaka . Sel`skoje chozaistvo i lesovodstvo St. Petersburg (1892) 169: pp. 104–121
  • DI Ivanovskij: About the mosaic disease of the tobacco plant . Journal of Plant Diseases (1903) 13.1: pp. 1-41

literature

  • Константин Ефремович Овчаров: Дмитрий Иосифович Ивановский 1864-1920 . Изд-во АН СССР, Москва 1952.
  • V. Gutina: Ivanovsky, Dimitri Iosifovich . In: Charles Coulston Gillispie (Ed.): Dictionary of Scientific Biography . tape 7 : Iamblichus - Karl Landsteiner . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1973, p. 34-36 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of October 19, 1950, No. 4344.