Abstract
ONE of the most remarkable figures in the scientific world passed from among us on July 15. Elie Metchnikoff, as they wrote his name in France, his adopted home, stands out as the type of a gifted, indefatigable investigator of Nature who, in accordance with his beautiful and earnest character, never faltered in his career, but from his boyhood onwards devoted himself to the minute study of animal life, and by a natural and as it seemed inevitable process passed through the study of the microscopic structure and embryonic growth of simple marine organisms to the investigation of human diseases and his great discoveries of the nature of the process known as inflammation and of the mechanism of “immunity” to infective germs and the poisons produced by them. By every zoologist in the world he was especially honoured and revered; for it was to him that we owed the demonstration of the unity of biological science and the brilliant proof of the invaluable importance to humanity of that delightful pursuit of the structure and laws of growth and form of the lower animals which he and we had pursued from pure love of the beauty and wonder of the intricate problems of organic morphology.
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LANKESTER, E. Elias Metchnikoff . Nature 97, 443–446 (1916). https://doi.org/10.1038/097443a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/097443a0