Viruses are discovered by Russian–Ukrainian biologist Dimitri…
1892 CE
Ivanovsky had studied at the University of Saint Petersburg under Andrei Famintsyn in 1887, when he was sent to Ukraine and Bessarabia to investigate a tobacco disease causing great damage to plantations located there at the time.
Three years later, he was assigned to look into a similar disease occurrence of tobacco plants, this time raging in the Crimea region.
He discovered that both incidents of disease were caused by an extremely minuscule infectious agent, capable of permeating porcelain Chamberland filters, something which bacteria could never do.
He describes his findings in an article (1892).
Louis Pasteur had been unable to find a causative agent for rabies and had speculated about a pathogen too small to be detected by microscopes.
In 1884, the French microbiologist Charles Chamberland had invented the Chamberland filter (or Pasteur-Chamberland filter) with pores small enough to remove all bacteria from a solution passed through it.
Ivanovsky has used this filter to study what is now known as the tobacco mosaic virus: crushed leaf extracts from infected tobacco plants remained infectious even after filtration to remove bacteria.
Ivanovsky suggests the infection might be caused by a toxin produced by bacteria, but does not pursue the idea.
At the time it is thought that all infectious agents can be retained by filters and grown on a nutrient medium—this is part of the germ theory of disease.
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