Elie Metchnikoff

Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, known in Western scholarship as Elie Metchnikoff, was a Russian zoologist of Moldavian noble descent who in 1882 discovered phagocytosis, the process by which certain cells engulf and destroy invading pathogens, identifying the phagocyte and what would later be understood as the macrophage as a central mechanism of the body's cellular defenses. This work, establishing what is now called innate or cell-mediated immunity, earned him a share of the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Ehrlich, whose complementary work concerned humoral immunity. Later in his career he coined the term gerontology for the study of aging, theorized a role for intestinal bacteria in aging, and promoted the consumption of lactic acid bacteria for health, work now seen as an early foundation for modern probiotic research.