1. Adolf Meyer
Ilmuwan Jerman, mengadakan penelitian virus pada tanaman tembakau yang terinfeksi penyakit mozaik. Penelitian tersebut menghasilkan kesimpulan :
a. Pada daun yang berpenyakit, ditemukan zat tertentu, sedangkan daun yang sehat tidak.
b. Zat penyebab penyakit tersebut tidak dapat dibiakkan dalam medium agar-agar.
c. Zat tersebut tahan pada suhu 60o C.
Adolf Bernard Meyer adalah seorang ahli antropologi dan naturalis berkebangsaan Jerman yang dilahirkan di kota Hamburg pada tahun 1840.
Setelah menyelesaikan pendidikannya, Meyer mengunjungi Swiss, Belanda, Denmark, Sulawesi, Irian dan Filipina di akhir abad ke-19. Dia mengoleksi banyak spesimen dari perjalanannya.
Meyer bekerja di sebuah musium di Dresden dari tahun 1874 sampai 1906. Dia menyumbangkan koleksi spesimen burung yang dimilikinya ke Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft. Meyer adalah pengarang dari Says Wissens Ansicht... (Leipzig, 1870).
2. Dmitri Ivanovski
Ilmuwan Russia pada tahun 1892, mempelajarai penyakit mozaik pada tembakau. Penyebab penyakit tersebut diberi nama Virus, dan berikuran sangat kecil.
Dmitri Iosifovich Ivanovsky (alternative spelling Dmitrii or Dmitry Iwanowski, Russian: Ивановский, Дмитрий Иосифович) (1864-1920) was a Russian botanist, one of the discoverers of filterable nature of viruses (1892) and thus one of the founders of virology.[1][2][3][4][5]
Ivanovsky studied at the University of St Petersburg in 1887, when he was sent to Ukraine and Bessarabia to investigate a tobacco disease causing a great damage to plantations at the time. Three years later, he was assigned to look into similar disease of tobacco plants, this time raging in the Crimea region. He discovered that both diseases were caused by an extremely minuscule infectious agent, capable of permeating porcelain Chamberland filters, something which bacteria could never do. He described his findings in an article (1892) and a dissertation (1902).
In 1898, the Dutch microbiologist Martinus Beijerinck independently replicated Ivanovsky's experiments and became convinced that the filtered solution contained a new form of infectious agent, which he named virus. Beijerinck subsequently acknowledged Ivanovsky's priority of discovery.
3. M. Beijerinck
lmuwan Belanda, tahun 1899 juga meneliti penyakit mozaik pada tanaman tembakau. Virus penyebab mozaik pada tembakau disebut TMV (Tobacco Mozaic Virus). Martinus Willem Beijerinck (March 16, 1851 – January 1, 1931) was a Dutch microbiologist and botanist. Born in Amsterdam, Beijerinck studied at the Technical School of Delft, where he was awarded the degree of Chemical Engineer in 1872. He obtained his Doctor of Science degree from the University of Leiden in 1877.[1] At the time, Delft, then a Polytechnic, did not have the right to confer doctorates, so Leiden did this for them. He became a teacher in microbiology at the Agricultural School in Wageningen (now Wageningen University) and later at the Polytechnische Hogeschool Delft (Delft Polytechnic, currently Delft University of Technology) (from 1895). He established the Delft School of Microbiology. His studies of agricultural and industrial microbiology yielded fundamental discoveries in the field of biology. His achievements have been perhaps unfairly overshadowed by those of his contemporaries, Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, because unlike them, Beijerinck never studied human disease.
4. Wendell M. Stanley
Ilmuwan Amerika Serikat tahun 1935 dapat mengisolasi dan mengkristalkan virus. Penemuan Stanley tersebut merupakan awal berkembangnya penelitian tentang virus. Saat ini virus dipelejari khusus dalam ilmu Virologi. Satu unit virus yang lengkap disebut virion.Wendell Meredith Stanley (16 Agustus 1904-15 Juni 1971) adalah biokimiawan Amerika Serikat yang banyak menyediakan virus mosaik tembakau, mendapatkan kristal acerose yang baik yang memiliki sifat infektif virus. Penemuan revolusioner ini menandakan bentuk tak biasa virus hidup yang diwakili, dan mengantar Stanley pada Penghargaan Nobel dalam Kimia 1946.
