Alexander Kovalevsky

Alexander Kovalevsky
Kovalevsky.jpg
Alexander Kovalevsky
Born7 November 1840
Died1901
NationalityRussian Empire
Alma materUniversity of Heidelberg
Known forGastrulation
Scientific career
FieldsEmbryology

Alexander Onufrievich Kovalevsky (Russian: Алекса́ндр Ону́фриевич Ковале́вский, 7 November 1840 in Vorkovo, Dvinsky Uyezd, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire – 1901, St. Petersburg, Russian Empire) was a Russian Imperial embryologist, who studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg and became professor at the University of St Petersburg. He was the brother of the paleontologist Vladimir Kovalevsky, and the brother-in-law of the mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya.

Discoveries

A. Lancelet (a chordate), B. Larval tunicate, C. Adult tunicate. Kovalevsky saw that the notochord (1) and gill slit (5) are features shared by tunicates and vertebrates.

Kowalevsky's family belonged to Russian nobility.

He showed that all animals go through a period of gastrulation.

Kovalevsky discovered that tunicates are not molluscs, but that their larval stage has a notochord and pharyngeal slits, like vertebrates. Further, these structures develop from the same germ layers in the embryo as the equivalent structures in vertebrates, so he argued that the tunicates should be grouped with the vertebrates as chordates. 19th-century zoology thus converted embryology into an evolutionary science, connecting phylogeny with homologies between the germ layers of embryos, foreshadowing evolutionary developmental biology.

Antoine Fortuné Marion and Alexander Kovalevsky, founder and collaborator of the Annals of Natural History Museum of Marseille

Honors

He was elected on the 1st of May 1884 a Foreign Member of the Linnean Society of London. The St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists annually awards the A.O. Kovalevsky Medal.

Bibliography

  • Kowalevsky, A (1901). "Les Hedylidés, étude anatomique". Zapiski Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk. 12: 1–32.

This page was last updated at 2023-03-15 12:14 UTC. Update now. View original page.

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