Sergey Nikolayevich Winogradsky

Sergey Nikolayevich Winogradsky (born Sept. 1, 1856, Kiev, Russian Empire [now in Ukraine]—died Feb. 25, 1953, Brie-Comte-Robert, France) was a Russian microbiologist whose discoveries concerning the physiology of the processes of nitrification and nitrogen fixation by soil bacteria helped to establish bacteriology as a major biological science.

After studying natural sciences at the University of St. Petersburg in 1881, Winogradsky went (1885) to Strassburg, Ger. In 1887 he established the specific physiology of sulfur bacteria, demonstrating that the colourless form of these bacteria can obtain energy by oxidizing hydrogen sulfide to sulfur and then to sulfuric acid in the absence of light.

In 1888 Winogradsky went to the University of Zürich, where he discovered (1889–90) the microbial agents responsible for nitrification (the oxidation of ammonium salts to nitrites and nitrites to nitrates). He established two new genera—Nitrosomonas (nitrite formers) and Nitrosococcus ([Nitrobacter] nitrate formers)—for the two new types of microorganisms concerned in the process. He returned to St. Petersburg and worked for the Imperial Institute of Experimental Medicine until his first retirement in 1905. Forced out of Russia by the October Revolution of 1917, he resumed his career in 1922 at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where he remained until he again retired in 1940.

Britannica Quiz

Faces of Science

While at the Imperial Institute, Winogradsky proposed new methods of studying soil microorganisms, particularly those that fix nitrogen symbiotically in legumes as well as those dispersed in soil. In 1893–95 he also discovered Clostridium pasteurianum, an anaerobic bacterium (i.e., able to grow in the absence of oxygen) that is able to utilize free nitrogen from the atmosphere in metabolic processes.