Ilya Mechnikov was born in modern-day Ukraine to a Romanian noble father and a Ukrainian-Jewish mother, lived and worked for many years on the territory of what was then the Russian Empire, and later on continued his career in France.
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Ilya Mechnikov is credited with coining the term gerontology in 1903, for the emerging study of aging and longevity.
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Ilya Mechnikov was the youngest of five children of Ilya Ivanovich Mechnikov, an officer of the Imperial Guard.
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The family name Ilya Mechnikov is a translation from Romanian, since his father was a descendant of the Chancellor Yuri Stefanovich, the grandson of Nicolae Milescu Spataru.
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Ilya Mechnikov was advised by the botanist Ferdinand Cohn to work with Rudolf Leuckart at the University of Giessen.
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Ilya Mechnikov went to Sicily to set up his private laboratory in Messina.
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Ilya Mechnikov returned to Odessa as director of an institute set up to carry out Louis Pasteur's vaccine against rabies; due to some difficulties, he left in 1888 and went to Paris to seek Pasteur's advice.
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Ilya Mechnikov realized that in animals which have blood, the white blood cells gather at the site of inflammation, and he hypothesised that this could be the process by which bacteria were attacked and killed by the white blood cells.
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Ilya Mechnikov discussed his hypothesis with Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Claus, Professor of Zoology at the University of Vienna, who suggested to him the term "phagocyte" for a cell which can surround and kill pathogens.
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Ilya Mechnikov delivered his findings at Odessa University in 1883.
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Ilya Mechnikov tested on two volunteers of which one was not affected while the other almost died.
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Ilya Mechnikov hypothesised that the difference in cholera infection was due to differences in intestinal microbes, speculating that those who have plenty of beneficial ones would be healthier.
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Ilya Mechnikov espoused the potential life-lengthening properties of lactic acid bacteria such as Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp.
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Ilya Mechnikov shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1908 with Paul Ehrlich.
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Ilya Mechnikov was awarded honorary degree from the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, UK, and the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1906.
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Ilya Mechnikov was given honorary memberships in the Academy of Medicine in Paris and the Academy of Sciences and Medicine in Saint Petersburg.
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Ilya Mechnikov injected himself with the spirochete of relapsing fever.
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Ilya Mechnikov was greatly influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
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