Martyn Terekhovskii

Terekhovskii, Martyn Matveevich 

Born 1740 in the city of Gadiach, in what is now Poltava Oblast; died June 1796, in St. Petersburg. Russian physician and naturalist.

In 1763, Terekhovskii graduated from the Kiev Theological Academy. In 1765 he completed a course of study at the St. Petersburg General Infantry Hospital, a teaching hospital; he studied botany as well as medicine. Terekhovskii worked at the Botanical Garden in St. Petersburg from 1767 to 1770 and became its director in 1783. In 1775 he defended a dissertation at the University of Strasbourg, The Linnaean Total Chaos. Using extensive experimental data, he rejected the theory of the spontaneous generation of microorganisms, or animalcules, and proved that they are formed only through reproduction.

In 1777, Terekhovskii began working at the Kronstadt General Naval Hospital. Beginning in 1779, with a brief interruption, he lectured on botany and human anatomy at the St. Petersburg General Infantry Hospital, where he became a professor in 1783.