I am really sorry to inform you that Alexander Mylnikov passed away last week (May 30th) at the age of 66 after suffering from cancer for the last few years.
Professor Mylnikov was an outstanding protistologist and scientist. A great expert in the morphology, the ultrastructure, and the evolution of the eukaryotic cells. He collected and maintained the world’s largest collection of living cultures of heterotrophic flagellates, with more than 130 species and strains. Alexander Mylnikov described 3 new taxonomic phyla of protists – Multiflagellata, Colponemidia, and Acavomonidia, as well as class Gymnophrea and three orders of amoeboid and predatory flagellates (Apusomonadida, Cercomonadida, and Spiromonadida). He also described 37 new species and 4 genera of flagellates, and 3 species of centrohelid heliozoans. In his honor a new species of heliozoans Acanthocystis mylnikovi (Leonov, 2010), three species of heterotrophic flagellates Cafeteria mylnikovii (Cavalier-Smith et Chao 2006), Planomonas mylnikovi (Cavalier-Smith et al., 2008), and Allapsa mylnikovi (Howe et al., 2009), as well as filose amoeba Limnofila mylnikovi (Bass et al., 2009) were named.
His death is a great loss for protistology.
Requiescat in pace.
Denis Tikhonenkov
Institute for the Biology of Inland Waters
Russian Academy of Sciences