The Founder of VirologyDmitry losip

The Founder of Virology
Dmitry losiphovitch Ivanovsky, a prominent Russian scientist, was bom in 1864. In 1888 he graduated from Petersburg University and began to study the physiology of plants and microbiology.
When D. I. Ivanovsky was investigating the tobacco mosaic disease (мозаичная болезнь табака) he was able to come to the conclusion that this disease occurred due to a microscopic agent, many times smaller than bacteria.
To prove this phenomenon D. I. Ivanovsky had to make many experiments on various plants. He had to pass the Juice of the diseased plant through a fine filter which could catch the smallest bacteria. At that time a little over 70 years ago everybody considered that bacteria were the smallest living organisms. But when D. I. Ivanovsky had completed to pass the juice through a fine filter, he was able to come to conclusion that the living organisms smaller than bacteria existed in the environment, because when he introduced the filtrate of the diseased plants to healthy ones they became infected.
Before D. I. Ivanovsky nobody had been able to prove the existence of viruses. Dmitry Iosiphovitch Ivanovsky was the first scientist who was able to establish the new branch of microbiology—virology.