Lina Zeldovich

His first wife died of tuberculosis. It's a disease that kills you slowly. You can basically watch your loved one wither away. Day after day, month after month. They traveled to places with better climate, milder winters, sunnier places, and nothing helped, and she eventually died.

His second wife contracted typhoid fever and it looked like she could die. And so he inoculated himself with some kind of a tick-borne disease, thinking that they will die together. But neither one of them died.

At the time, the human intestine was viewed as accessible of all sorts of toxins. I guess the proof that all the scientists had was, you know, hey, just look what comes out of your rear end. Any more questions?

I mean, I don't even know how many different brands of yogurt we have today, but Danone is still there.

So he died from a heart attack. And the moments before he died, he asked his assistant to... carefully look into his intestines and see what's there once he was gone.

Nobody likes to die. Nobody likes to see their friends and family die. So we want to extend the lifespan as much as possible. People nowadays want to remain ageless.

Nobody likes to die. So we want to extend the lifespan as much as possible and health span as much as possible. Kind of just how Metchnikov envisioned. And with that goal, we keep searching.

I'm calling from Austin, Texas, and you are listening to TrueLine NPR.

He had a few brothers and sisters, and out of all of them, he was probably the most curious.

As a kid, he was always chasing bugs and, you know, looking at what bugs do.

Then he would invite all of his siblings and cousins for a lecture in natural history, and he would actually pay them out of his pocket money to come and listen to his lectures.

So I learned that name at a very young age.

He was like a new cherished name, a big name. A couple of research institutions were named after him. We definitely knew about him growing up.

From a very young age, I think he had this desire to alleviate human suffering. And that's how he sort of found his way into biological research.