The Evolutionary Biology Papers of Elie Metchnikoff

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Helena Gourko, Donald I. Williamson, Alfred I. Tauber

   Pages 1-21

3. On the Developmental Life-History of Myzostomum (1866)

   • Helena Gourko, Donald I. Williamson, Alfred I. Tauber

   Pages 22-27

4. On the Embryonic Development of Lower Crustacea (1866)

   • Helena Gourko, Donald I. Williamson, Alfred I. Tauber

   Pages 28-35

5. Anthropology and Darwinism (1875)

   • Helena Gourko, Donald I. Williamson, Alfred I. Tauber

   Pages 36-59

6. Essay on Questions about the Origin of Species (1876)

   • Helena Gourko, Donald I. Williamson, Alfred I. Tauber

   Pages 60-91

7. Comparative Embryological Studies (1881–1885)

   • Helena Gourko, Donald I. Williamson, Alfred I. Tauber

   Pages 92-143

8. Embryological Studies on Medusae: On the Evolutionary Origins of the Primary Tissues (1886)

   • Helena Gourko, Donald I. Williamson, Alfred I. Tauber

   Pages 144-206

9. The Struggle for Existence between Parts of the Animal Organism (1892)

   • Helena Gourko, Donald I. Williamson, Alfred I. Tauber

   Pages 207-216

10. Back Matter

    Pages 217-230

    PDF

Elie Metchnikoff (1845-1916), winner of the Nobel Prize in 1907 for his contributions to immunology, was first a comparative zoologist, who, working in the wake of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, made seminal contributions to evolutionary biology. His work in comparative embryology is best known in regard to the debates with Ernst Haeckel concerning animal genealogical relationships and the theoretical origins of metazoans. But independent of those polemics, Metchnikoff developed his `phagocytosis theory' of immunity as a result of his early comparative embryology research, and only in examining the full breadth of his work do we appreciate his signal originality. Metchnikoff's scientific papers have remained largely untranslated into English. Assembled here, annotated and edited, are the key evolutionary biology papers dating from Metchnikoff's earliest writings (1865) to the texts of his mature period of the 1890s, which will serve as an invaluable resource for those interested in the historical development of evolutionary biology.

• Charles Darwin
• Crustacea
• Darwin
• Ernst Haeckel
• Metazoa
• development
• embryology
• evolution
• evolutionary biology
• the origin
• tissue

• Belorussian University, Belarus

  Helena Gourko

• Boston University, USA

  Helena Gourko, Alfred I. Tauber

• Liverpool University, UK

  Donald I. Williamson

Policies and ethics