Dmitri Iosifovich Ivanovsky (alternative spelling ''Dmitrii'' or ''Dmitry Iwanowski''; ; 28 October 1864 – 20 June 1920) was a Russian botanist, the co-discoverer of
:viruses (1892), and one of the founders of
virology
Virology is the Scientific method, scientific study of biological viruses. It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host (biology), ...
.
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
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
and
Bessarabia
Bessarabia () is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Bessarabia lies within modern-day Moldova, with the Budjak region covering the southern coa ...
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
Crimea ( ) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukrain ...
region. He discovered that both incidents of disease were caused by an
extremely minuscule infectious agent, capable of permeating porcelain
Pasteur-Chamberland filters, something which bacteria could never do. He described his findings in an article (1892) and a dissertation (1902).
Then he worked at the
Imperial University of Warsaw and at
Donskoy University in
Rostov on Don.
In 1898, the Dutch microbiologist
Martinus Beijerinck
Martinus Willem Beijerinck (, 16 March 1851 – 1 January 1931) was a Dutch microbiologist and botanist who was one of the founders of virology and environmental microbiology. He is credited with the co-discovery of viruses
A virus i ...
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 in the discovery of the filterable, submicroscopic entity.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ivanovski, Dmitri
1864 births
1920 deaths
Saint Petersburg State University alumni
Russian virologists
19th-century botanists from the Russian Empire
Russian scientists
Academic staff of the University of Warsaw