In 1908 Ilya Mechnikov received the Nobel Prize for his work on immunisation: in his time he had discovered, in the larva of a starfish, mobile cells that destroy foreign bodies

In 1908 Ilya Mechnikov received the Nobel Prize for his work on immunisation: in his time he had discovered, in the larva of a starfish, mobile cells that destroy foreign bodies. The discovery of phagocytes made no proper impression on the scientific world, either in Russia or in the West. Only 16 years later would the Nobel Committee appreciate the sensation, but, by an irony of fate, by then Mechnikov would be occupied with quite different questions. For example, how old age and death became elements of natural selection, and why they arrive so prematurely. In the course of these researches the scientist identified 107 useless and even harmful human organs. The large intestine, which releases poisons as a result of putrefactive processes, he named a deadly atavism. Ilya Ilyich meant to defeat this effect with a shock regime of soured milk: he himself switched his diet to dairy products and to a culture of the Bulgarian bacillus, from which yoghurt is made. But, alas, he was not to see the outcome of the experiment: in 1915 Mechnikov died of myocarditis.

Ilya Mechnikov's body was cremated, and the urn with his ashes was placed in a bookcase in the library of the Pasteur Institute, where he had worked for many years. The scientist's fate...