Dmitri Ivanovsky

Dmitri Iosifovich Ivanovsky (alternative spelling Dmitrii or Dmitry Iwanowski; Russian: Дми́трий Ио́сифович Ивано́вский;[lower-alpha 1] 28 October 1864 – 20 June 1920) was a Russian botanist, the discoverer of viruses (1892) and one of the founders of virology.[1][2][3][4][5]

Dmitri Ivanovsky
Ivanovsky c. 1915
Born	28 October 1864 Village of Nizy, Gdov Uyezd, Saint Petersburg Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	20 June 1920 (aged 55) Rostov-on-Don, Soviet Russia
Nationality	Russian
Alma mater	University of Saint Petersburg
Known for	Discovery of viruses, Tobacco mosaic virus
Scientific career
Fields	Virology
Institutions	University of Saint Petersburg University of Warsaw Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Donskoy University
Doctoral advisor	Andrei Famintsyn
Influences	Adolf Mayer
Influenced	Wendell Stanley

Life

Ivanovsky was born in the village of Nizy, Gdov Uyezd. He studied at the University of Saint Petersburg under Andrei Famintsyn in 1887, when he was sent to Ukraine and Bessarabia to investigate a tobacco disease causing great damage to plantations located there at the time. Three years later, he was assigned to look into a similar disease occurrence of tobacco plants, this time raging in the Crimea region. He discovered that both incidents of disease were caused by an extremely minuscule infectious agent, capable of permeating porcelain Chamberland filters, something which bacteria could never do. He described his findings in an article (1892)[6] and a dissertation (1902).[7] Then he worked at the Imperial University of Warsaw and at Donskoy University in Rostov on Don.

Soviet stamp from 1964 with Ivanovsky.

In 1898, the Dutch microbiologist Martinus Beijerinck independently replicated Ivanovsky's experiments and became convinced that the filtered solution contained a new form of infectious agent, which he named virus. Beijerinck subsequently acknowledged Ivanovsky's priority of discovery.[2]

Notes

1. Дмитрій Іосифовичъ Ивановскій in Russian pre-revolutionary script.

References

1. Lechevalier, Hubert (1972). "Dmitri Iosifovich Ivanovski (1864–1920)". Bacteriological Reviews. Washington, D.C.: American Society for Microbiology. 36 (2): 135–45. doi:10.1128/BR.36.2.135-145.1972. ISSN 0005-3678. PMC 408320. PMID 4557165.
2. Lustig, A.; Levine, A. J. (August 1992). "One hundred years of virology". Journal of Virology. 66 (8): 4629–31. doi:10.1128/JVI.66.8.4629-4631.1992. PMC 241285. PMID 1629947.
3. Bos, L. (1995). "The Embryonic Beginning of Virology: Unbiased Thinking and Dogmatic Stagnation". Archives of Virology. 140 (3): 613–619. doi:10.1007/bf01718437. ISSN 0304-8608. PMID 7733832. S2CID 23685370.
4. Zaitlin, Milton (1998). "The Discovery of the Causal Agent of the Tobacco Mosaic Disease" (PDF). In Kung, S. D.; Yang, S. F. (eds.). Discoveries in Plant Biology. Hong Kong: World Publishing Co. pp. 105–110. ISBN 978-981-02-1313-8.
5. Sebastion, Anton (2001). A dictionary of the history of science. Google Books Excerpt: Informa Health Care. p. 267. ISBN 9781850704188. Retrieved 24 October 2008.
6. Iwanowski, D. (1892). "Über die Mosaikkrankheit der Tabakspflanze". Bulletin Scientifique Publié Par l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg / Nouvelle Serie III (in German and Russian). St. Petersburg. 35: 67–70. Translated into English in Johnson, J., Ed. (1942) Phytopathological classics (St. Paul, Minnesota: American Phytopathological Society) No. 7, pp. 27–-30.
7. Iwanowski, D. (1903). "Über die Mosaikkrankheit der Tabakspflanze". Zeitschrift für Pflanzenkrankheiten und Pflanzenschutz (in German). 13: 1–41.

Sources

• Lecoq, H (October 2001). "Découverte du premier virus, le virus de la mosaïque du tabac: 1892 ou 1898?" [Discovery of the first virus, the tobacco mosaic virus: 1892 or 1898?]. Comptes rendus de l'Acaée des sciences. Series III – Sciences de la Vie (in French). 324 (10): 929–33. Bibcode:2001CRASG.324..929L. doi:10.1016/S0764-4469(01)01368-3. PMID 11570281.

External links

• "Viruses and the Prokaryotic World". Retrieved 19 April 2008.