{{Short description|Russian lichenologist and evolutionary biologist}} {{good article}} {{Use dmy dates|date=January 2019}} {{Family name hatnote|Sergeevich|Mereschkowski|lang=Eastern Slavic}} {{Infobox scientist | name = Konstantin Mereschkowski | image = File:Konstantin Mereschkowski cr.jpg | caption = Mereschkowski {{circa|1885}} | birth_date = {{Birth date|df=yes|1855|08|04}} | birth_place = Saint Petersburg, Russia | death_date = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1921|01|09|1855|08|04}} | death_place = Geneva, Switzerland | resting_place = | residence = | citizenship = Russian | nationality = | fields = Lichens<br />Diatoms<br />Hydrozoa | workplaces = University of Kazan | alma_mater = University of Saint Petersburg | known_for = Theory of symbiogenesis | author_abbrev_bot = Mereschk. | awards = | spouse = Olga Petrovna Sultanova }}
'''Konstantin Sergeevich Mereschkowski'''{{efn|His first name is transliterated variously as ''Konstantin'' or ''Constantin''. His patronymic is transliterated as ''Sergeevich, Sergivich, Sergeevič, Sergejewitsch'', or ''Sergejewicz''. His surname is transliterated as ''Mereschkowski, Merezhkovsky, Merezjkovski, Mérejkovski, Mereschcowsky, Mereschkovsky, Merezhkowski'', and ''Merežkovskij''.<!--at least 70 possible combinations, then, so let's not try to list them-->}} ({{lang-rus|Константи́н Серге́евич Мережко́вский|p=mʲɪrʲɪˈʂkofskʲɪj}}; {{OldStyleDateDY|4 August|1855|23 July}} – 9 January 1921) was a Russian biologist and botanist, active mainly around Kazan, whose research on lichens led him to propose the theory of symbiogenesis – that larger, more complex cells (of eukaryotes) evolved from the symbiotic relationship between less complex ones. He presented this theory in 1910, in his work, ''The Theory of Two Plasms as the Basis of Symbiogenesis, a New Study of the Origins of Organisms'', although the fundamentals of the idea had already appeared in his earlier 1905 work, ''The nature and origins of chromatophores in the plant kingdom''.
==Biography==
===Early life===
Konstantin was born in Saint Petersburg, one of six sons and three daughters in the Mereschkowski family. His father, Sergey Ivanovich, served as a senior official in several Russian local governors' cabinets (including that of I.D. Talyzin in Orenburg) before entering Alexander II's court office as a privy councillor. His mother, Varvara Vasilyevna (née Tcherkasova), was a daughter of a senior Saint Petersburg security official, and was fond of arts and literature. The writer Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1866–1941) was one of his younger brothers.<ref>Mihaylov, Oleg. "The Prisoner of Culture". Foreword to ''The Complete Work of D.S. Merezhkovsky'' in 4 volumes. 1990. Pravda Publishers.</ref><ref>Zobnin, Yuri (2008). ''The Life and Deeds of Dmitry Merezhkovsky''. Moscow. Molodaya Gvardiya. Lives of Distinguished People series, issue 1091. pp. 15–16. {{ISBN|978-5-235-03072-5}}</ref>
From 1875 to 1880 he worked for his degree at the University of Saint Petersburg, travelling north to the White Sea to examine marine invertebrates and discovering a genus of Hydrozoa. On graduating he travelled to France and Germany, meeting famous scientists; he published on anthropology and animal pigments while in Paris.<ref name=JstorGlobalPlants/>
===Career===
In 1883 he married Olga Petrovna Sultanova, and became a lecturer at the University of Saint Petersburg. In 1886 they emigrated from Russia for unexplained reasons, possibly connected to the acts of paedophilia for which he was later prosecuted. The family set up home in Crimea, where he found work as a botanist looking at varieties of grape; he also created a substantial collection of diatoms from the Black Sea. In 1898, he left his wife and young son in Crimea and emigrated to America, where he took the name "William Adler". He worked in California as a botanist at Los Angeles and University of California, Berkeley, devising a new system of classification of the diatoms based on the internal structures of the specimens in his Black Sea collection. In 1902, he returned to Russia to become curator of zoology at Kazan University; he became a lecturer there in 1904, and started to develop his ideas on the symbiotic origins of complex cells. In 1913 he edited the exsiccata ''Lichenes Rossiae exsiccati a Prof. D-re C. Mereschkovsky editi''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Lichenes Rossiae exsiccati a Prof. D-re C. Mereschkovsky editi: IndExs ExsiccataID=633816718 |website=IndExs - Index of Exsiccatae|publisher=Botanische Staatssammlung München |url=https://www.botanischestaatssammlung.de/DatabaseClients/IndExs/Exsiccatae_IndExs_Details.jsp?ExsiccataID=633816718 |access-date=11 July 2024}}</ref> In 1914 he was prosecuted for raping more than two dozen girls. He had earlier escaped Saint Petersburg in 1886 and the Crimea in 1898 for fear of being prosecuted for similar crimes. He was dismissed from Kazan University, and escaped to France.<ref name="JSTOR">{{cite web |last=Wills |first=Matthew |title=Can You Be a Good Scientist and a Horrible Person at the Same Time? |url=https://daily.jstor.org/can-you-be-a-good-scientist-and-a-horrible-person-at-the-same-time/ |work=JSTOR daily |date=8 January 2020 |access-date=26 April 2021}}</ref> In 1918 he moved to the Conservatoire Botanique in Geneva, where he worked on Jules Paul Benjamin Delessert's lichen collection<ref name=JstorGlobalPlants>{{cite web |title=Mereschkowski (Merezhkowsky), Konstantin Sergejewicz (Constantin) (1854–1921) |url=http://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.person.bm000315182 |work=JSTOR Global Plants |access-date=1 May 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Briquet |first=J. |date=1940 |title=Biographies des Botanistes a Genève |trans-title=Biographies of Botanists at Geneva |journal=Bulletin de la Société Botanique Suisse |language=fr |volume=50a |pages=318–320}}</ref><ref name="Sapp et al.">{{cite journal |last1=Sapp |first1=J. |last2=Carrapiço |first2=F. |last3=Zolotonosov |first3=M. |pmid=15045832 |date=2002 |title=Symbiogenesis, the hidden face of Constantin Merezhkowski |journal=History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences |volume=24 |issue=3–4 |pages=412–440 |doi=10.1080/03919710210001714493 }}</ref> and distributed the exsiccata ''Lichenes Ticinenses exsiccati, rariores vel novi, pro parte ex aliis pagis provenientes, editi a Prof. Dre. C. Mereschkovsky''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Lichenes Ticinenses exsiccati, rariores vel novi, pro parte ex aliis pagis provenientes, editi a Prof. Dre. C. Mereschkovsky: IndExs ExsiccataID=21039903 |website=IndExs - Index of Exsiccatae|publisher=Botanische Staatssammlung München |url=https://www.botanischestaatssammlung.de/DatabaseClients/IndExs/Exsiccatae_IndExs_Details.jsp?ExsiccataID=21039903 |access-date=11 July 2024}}</ref>
===Death=== thumb|240px|Suicide scene of Konstantin Mereschkowski In Geneva, he became seriously depressed, ran out of money, and on 9 January 1921 he was found dead in his hotel room, having tied himself up in his bed with a mask which was supplied with an asphyxiating gas from a metal container. It appears that his suicide was directly connected to his paedophilic utopian beliefs (reflected in his 1903 book of stories, ''Earthly Paradise, or a Winter Night's Dream. Tales from the 27th century'') as well as his view that he was becoming too old and frail to continue his history of child abuse. As an atheist, his dreamed-of utopia was to be scientifically based, involving the evolution of a perfect human race of paedophiles held aloft by the enslavement of Africans, Asians, and others. The ''Earthly Paradise'' describes specially-bred castes of human including one of neotenised, sexualizing children prolonged into adult age - still displaying child-like features and behaviour - who were put to death at the age of 35, as they could not be happy in old age. Further, he held extreme ideological beliefs on eugenics and antisemitism. He actively assisted the far-right Black Hundredist organisation the Kazan Department of the Union of Russian People, and provided secret assistance to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in hunting down Jews and supposed traitors.<ref name="Sapp et al."/><ref>Mereschkowski, Konstantin S. (1903) ''Das irdische Paradies oder ein Winternachtstraum''. Märchen aus dem 27. Jahrhundert (German edition), Gottheiners Verlag, Berlin.</ref><ref>David Quammen, ''The Tangled Trees: A Radical New History of Life,'' Simon & Schuster 2018 pp. 124–130</ref>
== Symbiogenesis ==
{{further|Symbiogenesis}}
[[File:Konstantin Mereschkowski Symbiogenesis Tree of Life.jpg|thumb|Mereschkowski's tree-of-life diagram, showing the origin of complex life-forms by two episodes of symbiogenesis, the incorporation of symbiotic bacteria, 1905<ref name=SciAmMereschkowsky/>]]
Mereschkowski argued that the cell organelles, the nucleus and the chloroplast, are the descendants of bacteria that evolved into an intracellular symbiosis with amoebae.<ref name=Meresch1910>{{cite journal |last=Mereschkowsky |first=Konstantin |title=Theorie der zwei Plasmaarten als Grundlage der Symbiogenesis, einer neuen Lehre von der Entstehung der Organismen |url=https://archive.org/details/cbarchive_42856_theoriederzweiplasmaartenalsgr1881/page/n2 |journal=Biologisches Centralblatt |year=1910 |volume=30 |pages=353–367}}</ref><ref name=Meresch1905>{{cite journal |author=Mereschkowski, C. |title=Über Natur und Ursprung der Chromatophoren im Pflanzenreiche |journal=Biol Centralbl |year=1905 |volume=25 |pages=593–604 |url=https://archive.org/details/cbarchive_51353_bernaturundursprungderchromato1881/page/n2}}</ref><ref name=SciAmMereschkowsky/><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Kowallik |first1=K. V. |last2=Martin |first2=W. F. |date=2021 |title=The origin of symbiogenesis: An annotated English translation of Mereschkowsky's 1910 paper on the theory of two plasma lineages |journal=Biosystems |language=en |volume=199 |article-number=104281 |doi=10.1016/j.biosystems.2020.104281 |pmid=33279568 |pmc=7816216 |issn=0303-2647 |doi-access=free|bibcode=2021BiSys.19904281K }}</ref> His work was influenced by the French botanist Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper who had noted that chloroplasts resembled cyanobacteria.<ref name="Endosymbiotic History">{{cite web | url=https://theendosymbiotichypothesis.wordpress.com/history/ | title=History: The Endosymbiotic Hypothesis | publisher=Charles A. Ferguson, University of Colorado - Denver | work=The Endosymbiotic Hypothesis: A Biological Experience | date=Fall 2012 | access-date=16 September 2017 | author=Dillon Riebel, Austin Fogle, Filiberto Morales, and Kevin Huang}}</ref> Mereschkowski's ideas are according to K. V. Kowallik "strikingly"<ref name=SciAmMereschkowsky/> reflected in the modern symbiogenesis theory developed and popularised by Ivan Wallin<ref name="Endosymbiotic History"/> and Lynn Margulis, and now widely accepted. The modern view is that two endosymbiotic events did take place, one by incorporating bacteria that became the mitochondria of all eukaryotes, and another soon afterwards in the line that became the plants to form chloroplasts.<ref name=SciAmMereschkowsky>{{cite magazine |title=Mereschkowsky's Tree of Life |url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mereschkowskys-tree-of-li/ |magazine=Scientific American |access-date=1 May 2017}}</ref><ref name=Martin>{{cite journal |last=Martin |first=William |author2=Mayo Roettger |author3=Thorsten Kloesges |author4=Thorsten Thiergart |author5=Christian Woehle |author6=Sven Gould |author7=Tal Dagan |year=2012 |title=Modern endosymbiotic theory: Getting lateral gene transfer in-to the equation |journal=Journal of Endocytobiosis and Cell Research |volume=23 |pages=1–5 |url=http://www.molevol.hhu.de/fileadmin/redaktion/Fakultaeten/Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche_Fakultaet/Biologie/Institute/Molekulare_Evolution/Dokumente/martin001.pdf |access-date=1 May 2017 |archive-date=9 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220309044351/https://www.molevol.hhu.de/fileadmin/redaktion/Fakultaeten/Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche_Fakultaet/Biologie/Institute/Molekulare_Evolution/Dokumente/martin001.pdf }}</ref>
Around the turn of the century, Mereschkowski formed a sizeable lichen collection, containing over 2000 specimens from Russia, Austria and around the Mediterranean. The collection remains at Kazan University. It had recently been shown that each lichen species consisted of a mutualistic symbiosis between a fungus and one or more algae. This may have inspired his theory of symbiogenesis. Mereschkowski rejected Darwinian evolution, believing that natural selection could not explain biological novelty. He argued instead that the acquisition and inheritance of microbes was central. He was criticised and even ridiculed by other biologists,<ref name=JstorGlobalPlants/> such as the Polish lichenologist Alexandr Alexandrovich Elenkin.<ref>{{cite book |last=Brooks |first=Michael |title=Free Radicals: The Secret Anarchy of Science |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nDMjCQAAQBAJ&pg=PT108 |year=2012 |publisher=The Overlook Press |isbn=978-1-4683-0171-7 |pages=107–108}}</ref>
==Eponyms== Species named after Mereschkowski include ''Plowrightia mereschkowskyi'' {{small|Vouaux (1912)}},<ref name="Vouaux 1912">{{cite journal |last1=Vouaux |first1=L. |year=1912 |title=Synopsis des champignons parasites de lichens |journal=Bulletin de la Société Mycologique de France |volume=28 |pages=194–195 |language=fr |url=https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/34207961}}</ref> ''Physcia mereschkowskii'' {{small|Tomin (1926)}},<ref name="Tomin 1926">{{cite book |last1=Tomin |first1=Mikhail Piatrovich |year=1926 |title=Über die Bodenflechten aus den Halwüsten von Südost-Russland |publisher=Woronesch |page=7 |language=de}}</ref> and ''Caloplaca mereschkowskiana'' {{small|S.Y.Kondr. & Kärnefelt (2011)}}.<ref name="Lumbsch et al. 2011">{{cite journal |vauthors=Lumbsch T, Ahti T, Altermann S, Arup U, Kärnefelt I, Thell A, etal |title=One hundred new species of lichenized fungi: a signature of undiscovered global diversity |journal=Phytotaxa |year=2011 |volume=18 |issue=1 |page=33 |doi=10.11646/phytotaxa.18.1.1 |url=https://www.mapress.com/phytotaxa/content/2011/f/p00018p127f.pdf }} {{open access}}</ref>
{{botanist|Mereschk.|Mereschkowski, Konstantin}}
==Notes== {{notelist}}
==References== {{reflist|30em}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mereschkowski, Konstantin Sergivich}} Category:1855 births Category:1921 suicides Category:1921 deaths Category:Evolutionary biologists Category:Lichenologists from the Russian Empire Category:19th-century botanists from the Russian Empire Category:Phycologists Category:Mycologists from the Russian Empire Category:Botanists with author abbreviations Category:Saint Petersburg State University alumni Category:Symbiogenesis researchers Category:Russian scientists Category:Suicides by gas Category:Suicides in Switzerland