Odesa I. I. Mechnykov National University, often referred to as Odesa National University, located in Odesa, Ukraine, is one of the country's major universities, named after the scientist Élie Metchnikoff, a Nobel prizewinner in 1908. The university was founded in 1865 by an edict of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, which reorganized the Richelieu Lyceum of Odesa into the new Imperial Novorossiya University. In the Soviet era, the university was renamed Odesa I. I. Mechnykov State University.