Konstantin Mereschkowski

(1855-1921)

Russian lichenologist and evolutionary biologist

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Konstantin Sergeevich Mereschkowski (Russian: Константи́н Серге́евич Мережко́вский, 4 August 1855 [O.S. 23 July] – 9 January 1921) was a prominent 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 Russian 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 already had appeared in his earlier 1905 work, The nature and origins of chromatophores in the plant kingdom.