Russian founder of comparative embryology and experimental histology, who established for the first time the existence of a common pattern in the embryological development of all multicellular animals.

Kovalevsky received a doctor of science degree from the University of St. Petersburg (1867) and taught there (1867, 1891–93) and at the universities of Kazan (1868–69), Kiev (1869–74), and Odessa (1874–90). He also went on lengthy expeditions to the Red Sea and to the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea.

Kovalevsky's demonstration of a common development pattern in the embryos of a wide variety of vertebrates and invertebrates provided important evidence of the evolution of living organisms, as shown in his Development of Amphioxus lanceolatus (1865) and Anatomy and Development of Phoronis (1887). In 1890 he was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences.