Lev Semionovich Tsenkovsky was born on 13 October (1 October in the unreformed calendar) 1822 in Warsaw. In 1844 he graduated from St Petersburg University with a candidate degree. From 1846 to 1865, he worked at St Petersburg University, then in Germany, France and Austro-Hungary. From 1865 to 1871 he was a professor, head of the Chair of Botany at the university of Novorossiysk [now Odesa, Ukraine]. There he described and studied a number of freshwater and marine organisms. His main mycological investigations were of the development of certain aquatic fungi, including Archimycetes of the genus Rhizidium and Saprolegniomycetes from the genus Achlya. These studies began in St Petersburg and finished in Odesa. At Kharkiv in 1871-1886 he studied fungal diseases of insects, in particular the green muscardina. He published his work on this disease in 1880. The Novorossijsk Society of Naturalists instituted a prize in honour of Tsenkovsky, which was awarded in turns in the different cities where he worked, St Petersburg, Kharkiv and Odesa. L.S. Tsenkovsky died on 25 September 1887 in Leipzig.