Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (1845–1916) was a great natural scientist who always believed that “only science can give happiness to mankind”. Years passed, and we have learned to overcome many diseases that had been incurable before, but we will always recall with gratitude what we owe to our fellow countryman. His merits before mankind are immense.

Not being a doctor himself, Mechnikov enriched medicine with many discoveries, and laid the foundation for a new direction in biology – evolutionary embryology. He discovered the phagocytosis phenomenon and his zoological and embryological experiments were laid in the foundation of the phagocytic theory of immunity: the study of a body’s ability to destroy pathogenic germs with the help of phagocytic cells.

There would be no antibiotics without his discoveries; he participated in the creation of vaccines against cholera, typhoid fever, rabies and plague. For the sake of science, he did not spare his life. Exposing himself to deadly risk, and when his creative powers were at their height, at 36 years of age he experimented on himself to test the effectiveness of a vaccine against typhus. He injected the blood of a person ill with relapsing fever into his own body and was almost close to dying! In another case, he infected himself with weakened germs of cholera to check the correctness of his scientific hypothesis.

“Only science is capable of resolving the task of human existence”, Mechnikov claimed. He devoted his book, called “The Nature of Man” (1903), to man’s ability to “live right” and eat right, and he indicated the need to consume a large quantity of dairy products. (His very name is connected with a commercial method of kefir production).

And his book, called “The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies” (1907), allows us to have hope that someday we will live 120 years, but under the condition of leading the right way of life! Ilya Mechnikov can be rightfully considered the founder of gerontology, the science of a person’s longevity.

And though his discoveries belong to the world of science, Ilya Mechnikov’s life is closely connected with Ukraine. He was born in the village of Ivanivka in Kharkiv guberniya in 1845. Here, on the territory of Ukraine, he received his education. For many years his scientific and teaching activities were connected with Novorossiysk University in Odesa. He worked for 15 years in that city. Despite that, from 1887 Ilya Mechnikov lived and worked in Paris (in the Pasteur Institute); nevertheless, he would come to give lectures in Ukraine. In 1894, students of Kyiv University, fascinated by his brilliant lecture, carried him on their hands to a train station. His work, called “Immunity in Infectious Diseases”, is still a desk book of all scientists who study germs.

His contribution to world science was highly evaluated. Ilya Mechnikov was the Nobel Prize Laureate in Medicine in 1908. Let’s live long by remembering his words: “Human life became crazy at its halfway point, and old age is a disease and people should be cured of it, like any other.”