Nikolai Vavilov

Russian plant geneticist (1887–1943)

Having graduated from the Agricultural Institute in his native city of Moscow, Vavilov continued his studies firstly in England under William Bateson and then in France at the Vilmoren Institution. Back in Russia he was appointed, in 1917, both professor of genetics and selection at the Agricultural Institute, Voronezh, and professor of agriculture at Saratov University. Three years later he took over the directorship of the Bureau of Applied Botany, Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), which later became the All Union Institute of Plant Industry. The institute flourished under Vavilov's leadership, becoming the center for over 400 research institutes throughout the Soviet Union. In 1929 he became the first president of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

During the years 1916–1933 Vavilov led several plant-collecting expeditions to countries all around the globe. The purpose was to gather material of potential use in crop-breeding programs, particularly the wild relatives and ancestors of cultivated plants. He was highly successful in this, his collection numbering some 250,000 accessions by 1940. This was the first large-scale attempt to conserve and utilize the immensely valuable genetic resources upon which crop improvement relies.

A second important consequence of these travels was Vavilov's observation that the genetic diversity of crop relatives is concentrated in certain areas that he termed ‘gene centers’, postulating that these correspond to regions where agriculture originated. The theory and the exact number of centers have since been modified but the recognition of such areas is an invaluable aid to other plant hunters. He also found certain regularities between unrelated genera in such centers, described in The Law of Homologous Series in Variation (1922).

Vavilov's excellent work was gradually stifled by the intrusion of politics into Soviet biology in the 1930s. His belief in the advances in genetics made by Mendel and T. H. Morgan brought him into conflict with the government-backed Trofim Lysenko, who was returning to a Lamarckian view of inheritance. The 1937 International Congress of Genetics, due to be held in Moscow in view of the strides made in Soviet genetics under Vavilov, was canceled by the Lysenkoists. Vavilov was arrested in 1940 while plant collecting and died three years later in a Siberian labor camp.

Today Vavilov is recognized in his own country as an outstanding scientist, the Vavilov Institute being named in his honor.

The Russian botanist and geneticist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (1887-1943) is noted for his theory on the origin of cultivated plants and his law of the homologous series of inherited variation.

Nikolai Vavilov was born on Nov. 25, 1887, probably in Moscow, into a wealthy merchant family. Having decided to specialize in agriculture and biology, he entered the Agricultural Academy at Petrovsko-Razumovskoe. In 1913 and 1914 he continued his education at the School of Agriculture, Cambridge University, studying under Sir Rowland Biffen, and at the John Innes Horticultural Institution, working with William Bateson, a pioneer geneticist. Vavilov first established his scientific reputation by publishing papers on the immunity of cereals to fungus diseases, explaining immunity in terms of Mendelian factors, systematics, and plant physiology.

Upon returning to the former Soviet Union, Vavilov began to devote his attention to the origin of cultivated plants. Between 1916 and 1933 he traveled in Iran, Afghanistan, the Mediterranean area, Ethiopia, Somaliland, Japan, Korea, Formosa (now Taiwan), Mexico, and Central and South America, as well as many regions within the Soviet Union. The initial conclusions of his study appeared in The Centers of Origin of Cultivated Plants (1926). As a consequence of the expeditions of Soviet plant investigators to 60 countries between 1923 and 1933, Vavilov was able to list at least 8 centers with rich varieties of cultivated plants: the oldest in central and western China, India and Burma (now Myanmar), central Asia, the Near East, the Mediterranean region, Ethiopia, Mexico and Central America, and the South American nations of Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. In connection with these researches, Vavilov discovered the law of the homologous series of inherited variation, which states that closely related species tend to develop parallel hereditary variations. On the basis of this empirical law he had hoped to predict the direction of the evolution of established species and the emergence of new biological species.

From 1917 to 1921 Vavilov was professor at the University of Saratov, after which he was assigned to the Bureau of Applied Botany in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg). In 1923 he was appointed director of the State Institute of Experimental Agronomy, serving until 1929. From 1924 to 1940 he was the director of the All-Union Institute of Applied Botany and New Crops (renamed the All-Union Institute of Plant Growing). In 1929 he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences and became president of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences; he served as vice president of the latter organization from 1935 until 1937. He was also director of the Institute of Genetics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences for a decade after 1930. It is estimated that between 1921 and 1934 Vavilov was involved in organizing over 400 research institutes and experimental stations with a total staff of about 20, 000. In 1939 he was invited to become president of the International Congress of Genetics, and in 1940 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society of Great Britain.

Vavilov was a tireless and dedicated scientist; his major goal was to overcome the Soviet Union's agricultural backwardness by modern scientific theories and methods. However, he was more successful in stimulating the output of scientific papers at a time when Soviet agricultural productivity was decreasing and consequently left himself open to the criticism that he failed to merge theory with practice. Trofim Lysenko and his followers started to attack Vavilov's leadership and support of modern genetics. In 1936 the Congress on Genetics and Agriculture was convened in Moscow with the obvious purpose of discrediting Vavilov and genetics. Three years later the Conference on Genetics and Selection vilified Vavilov; his speech defending genetics was greeted with heckling and interruptions. In 1940 Vavilov was arrested, placed in a concentration camp at Saratov, and then transferred to a Siberian forced-labor camp located in Magadan. He died on Jan. 26, 1943, a broken man, a victim of quackery and Stalinist tyranny. In 1956 the Soviet Academy of Sciences ordered the republication of Vavilov's works, apparently in an effort to rehabilitate him.

Further Reading

Only scattered and brief biographical articles on Vavilov have appeared in Russian and English newspapers and journals. His The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated Plants (trans. 1951) is valuable for his scientific work. For accounts of the decline of Vavilov and genetics in the Soviet Union see Julian Huxley, Soviet Genetics and World Science (1949), and Conway Zirkle, ed., Death of a Science in Russia (1949).

Additional Sources

Popovskiei, Mark Aleksandrovich, The Vavilov affair, Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1984.

(1887 - 1943), internationally famous biologist.

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov achieved international fame as a plant scientist, geographer, and geneticist before he was arrested and sentenced to death on false charges of espionage in 1940. Born into a wealthy merchant family in pre-revolutionary Russia, Vavilov was renowned for his personal charm, integrity, and international scientific prestige. He graduated from the Moscow Agricultural Institute in 1911, continued his studies of genetics and horticulture in Europe the following year, and in 1916 led an expedition to Iran and the Pamir Mountains to search for ancestral forms of modern agricultural plant species. "The Law of Homologous Series in Hereditary Variation," his first major theoretical contribution, published in Russia in 1920 and then in the Journal of Genetics, argued that related species can be expected to vary genetically in similar ways.

Vavilov spoke many languages and traveled extensively throughout the United States and Europe to meet with colleagues and study scientific innovations in agriculture. He is best known for The Centers of Origin of Cultivated Plants (1926), in which he established that the greatest genetic diversity of wild plant species would be found near the origins of modern cultivated species. Until 1935 he organized expeditions to remote corners of the world in order to collect, catalog, and preserve specimens of plant biodiversity. In the Soviet Union Vavilov was a powerful advocate and organizer of scientific institutions, and he tirelessly promoted research in genetics and plant breeding as a means of improving Soviet agriculture. Vavilov was director of the Institute of Applied Botany (1924 - 1929), a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, director of the All-Union Institute of Plant Breeding (1930 - 1940) and the Institute of Genetics (1933 - 1940), president and vice-president of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1929 - 1938), and president of the All-Union Geographical Society (1931 - 1940).

Vavilov's increasingly vocal and uncompromising opposition to the falsification of genetic science propagated by Trofim Lysenko and his followers culminated in his arrest in 1940. His death sentence was commuted to a twenty-year prison term in 1942; he died of malnutrition in a Saratov prison one year later. Vavilov is considered a founding father in contemporary studies of plant biodiversity. He left an important legacy as one of the great Russian scientific and intellectual figures of the early twentieth century.

Bibliography

Graham, Loren R. (1993). Science in Russia and the Soviet Union. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Krementsov, Nikolai. (1997). Stalinist Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Popovskii, Mark Aleksandrovich. (1984). The Vavilov Affair. Hamdon, CT: Archon Books.

—YVONNE HOWELL

Nikolai Vavilov
Nikolai Vavilov
Born	November 25 [O.S. November 13] 1887 Moscow
Died	January 26, 1943
Nationality	Russia
Fields	botany genetics
Known for	Centres of origin

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (Russian: Николай Иванович Вавилов) (November 25 [O.S. November 13] 1887 – January 26, 1943) was a prominent Russian and Soviet botanist and geneticist best known for having identified the centres of origin of cultivated plants. He devoted his life to the study and improvement of wheat, corn, and other cereal crops that sustain the global population.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Timeline 3 Works 3.1 Works in English 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

Biography

Vavilov was born into a merchant family in Moscow, the older brother of renowned physicist Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov. He graduated from the Moscow Agricultural Institute in 1910 with a dissertation on snails as pests. From 1911 to 1912, he worked at the Bureau for Applied Botany and at the Bureau of Mycology and Phytopathology. From 1913 to 1914 he travelled in Europe and studied plant immunity, in collaboration with the British biologist William Bateson, who founded the science of genetics.

From 1924 to 1935 he was the director of the All-Union Institute of Agricultural Sciences at Leningrad.

While developing his theory on the centres of origin of cultivated plants, Vavilov organized a series of botanical-agronomic expeditions, collected seeds from every corner of the globe, and created in Leningrad the world's largest collection of plant seeds.^[1] This seedbank was diligently preserved even throughout the 28-month Siege of Leningrad, despite starvation; one of Nikolai's assistants starved to death surrounded by edible seeds. Vavilov also formulated the law of homologous series in variation.^[2] He was a member of the USSR Central Executive Committee, President of All-Union Geographical Society and a recipient of the Lenin Prize. During most of his career Vavilov was assisted by his deputy Georgy Balabajev.

Vavilov repeatedly criticised the non-Mendelian concepts of Trofim Lysenko. As a result, Vavilov was arrested on August 6, 1940 and died of malnutrition in a prison in 1943. According to Cohen, by 1940, Vavilov had accumulated a collection of 200,000 plant seeds from Soviet Union and from abroad. Most of his genetic samples were seized by a German collecting command set up in 1943, and were transferred to the SS Institute for Plant Genetics, which had been established at the Lannach Castle near Graz, Austria.^[3] However, the command could only take samples stored within the territories occupied by the German armies, mainly in Ukraine and Crimea. The main gene bank in Leningrad was not affected. The leader of the German command was Heinz Brücher, an SS officer who was also a plant genetics expert.

Today, the N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry in St. Petersburg still maintains one of the world's largest collections of plant genetic material.^[4] The Institute began as the Bureau of Applied Botany in 1894, and was reorganized in 1924 into the All-Union Research Institute of Applied Botany and New Crops, and in 1930 into the Research Institute of Plant Industry. Vavilov was the head of the institute from 1921 to 1940. In 1968 the Institute was renamed after him in time for its 75th anniversary.

A minor planet, 2862 Vavilov, discovered in 1977 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh is named after him and his brother Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov.^[5] The crater Vavilov on the Far side of the Moon is also named after him and his brother. The story of the researchers at the Vavilov Institute during the Siege of Leningrad was fictionalized by novelist Elise Blackwell in her 2003 novel Hunger. That novel was the inspiration for the Decemberists' song "When The War Came" in the 2006 album The Crane Wife, which also depicts the Institute during the siege and mentions Vavilov by name.

The standard author abbreviation Vavilov is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.^[6]

Timeline

Commemorative plaque of Nikolai Vavilov on wall of Russian State Agricultural University

• 1887 - born November 25, in Moscow.
• 1911 - graduated from the Moscow Agricultural Institute.
• 1917-1921 - professor of the agronomy department of the Saratov University.
• 1919 - theory of the immunity for plants.
• 1920 - formulation of the law of homology series in genetical mutability.
• mid 1920s - Vavilov befriends the young peasant Trofim Lysenko and begins taking him to scientific meetings
• 1921(-1940) - chairman of the applied botanics and selection section in Petrograd, which in 1924 was reorganized into the All-Union Institute of Applied Botanics and New Crops and in 1930, into the All-Union Institute of Plant Cultivation, with Vavilov being director until August, 1940.
• 1926 - Lenin Award.
• 1930—1940 - head of the genetics laboratory in Moscow, later reorganized into the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
• 1931—1940 - President of the All-Union Geographical Society.
• Late 1930s - Lysenko, who has conceived a hatred for genetics is put in charge of all of Soviet agriculture
• 1940 - arrested for allegedly wrecking Soviet agriculture; delivered more than a hundred hours of lectures on science while in prison
• 1943 - died imprisoned and suffering from dystrophia (faulty nutrition of muscles, leading to paralysis), in the Saratov prison.

The USSR Academy of Sciences established the Vavilov Award (1965) and the Vavilov Medal (1968).

Works

• Земледельческий Афганистан. (1929) (Agricultural Afghanistan)
• Селекция как наука. (1934) (Selection as science)
• Закон гомологических рядов в наследственной изменчивости. (1935) (The law of homology series in genetical mutability)
• Учение о происхождении культурных растений после Дарвина. (1940) (The theory of origins of cultivated plants after Darwin)

Works in English

• The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated Plants (translated by K. Starr Chester). 1951. Chronica Botanica 13:1–366
• Origin and Geography of Cultivated Plants (translated by Doris Love). 1992. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-40427-4
• Five Continents (translated by Doris Love). 1997. IPGRI, Rome; VIR, St. Petersburg ISBN 92-9043-302-7

See also

• VASKhNIL (the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union)
• All- Russia Institute of Plant Industry
• Vavilovian mimicry
• Vavilov Center
• The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin's Persecution of One of the Great Scientists of the Twentieth Century , Peter Pringle. 2008.

References

1. ^ The significance of Vavilov's scientific expeditions. PGR Newsletter 124. Bioversity International.
2. ^ Popov I. Yu (2002). Periodical systems in biology.
3. ^ Heinz Brücher and the SS botanical collecting command to Russia 1943. PGR Newsletter 129. Bioversity International.
4. ^ N.I.Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry at www.vir.nw.ru
5. ^ Schmadel, Lutz D. (2003), Dictionary of Minor Planet Names (5th ed.), New York: Springer Verlag, pp. 235, ISBN 3540002383, http://books.google.com/books?q=2862+Vavilov+QC2 
6. ^ "Author Query". International Plant Names Index. http://www.ipni.org/ipni/authorsearchpage.do. 

• Shumnyĭ, V K (2007), "[Two brilliant generalizations of Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (for the 120th anniversary)]", Genetika 43 (11): 1447–53, 2007 Nov, PMID 18186182 
• Zakharov, Ilya A (2005), "Nikolai I Vavilov (1887-1943).", J. Biosci. 30 (3): 299–301, 2005 Jun, doi:10.1007/BF02703666, PMID 16052067 
• Crow, J F (2001), "Plant breeding giants. Burbank, the artist; Vavilov, the scientist.", Genetics 158 (4): 1391–5, 2001 Aug, PMID 11514434 
• Crow, J F (1993), "N. I. Vavilov, martyr to genetic truth.", Genetics 134 (1): 1–4, 1993 May, PMID 8514123 
• Delone, N L, "[Significance of the scientific heritage of N.I. Vavilov in the development of space biology (on the centenary of his birth)]", Kosmicheskaia biologiia i aviakosmicheskaia meditsina 22 (6): 79–83, PMID 3066990 
• Vasina-Popova, E T (1987), "[The role of N. I. Vavilov in the development of Soviet genetics and animal selection]", Genetika 23 (11): 2002–6, 1987 Nov, PMID 3322935 
• Levina, E S (1987), "Not Available", Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki (Institut istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki (Akademiia nauk SSSR)) (4): 34–43, PMID 11636235 
• Alekseev, V P (1987), "Not Available", Sovetskaia ėtnografiia / Akademiia nauk SSSR i Narodnyĭ komissariat prosveshcheniia RSFSR (6): 72–80, PMID 11636003 
• Raipulis, J (1987), "Not Available", Vestis. Izvestiia. Latvijas PSR Zinātnu akadēmija (9): 71–6, PMID 11635329 
• "[Correspondence legacy of N. I. Vavilov]", Genetika 15 (8): 1525–6, 1979, PMID 383572 
• Berdyshev, G D; Savchenko, N I; Pomogaĭbo, V M; Shcherbina, D M, "[Celebration of the 90th anniversary of the birth of N. I. Vavilov in the Ukraine]", Tsitol. Genet. 12 (2): 177–9, PMID 356364 
• Khuchua, K N, "[Life and career of Academician N. I. Vavilov. On the 90th anniversary of his birth]", Tsitol. Genet. 12 (2): 174–7, PMID 356363 
• Kondrashov, V (1978), "[On the 90th birthday of N. I. Vavilov]", Genetika 14 (12): 2225, PMID 369949 
• Reznik, S. and Y. Vavilov 1997 "The Russian Scientist Nicolay Vavilov" (preface to English translation of:) Vavilov, N. I. Five Continents. IPGRI: Rome, Italy.
• Cohen, Barry Mendel 1980 Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov: His Life and Work. Ph.D.: University of Texas at Austin.
• Cohen, Barry Mendel 1991: Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov: the explorer and plant collector. Economic Botany, 45(1): 38-46.
• Bakhteev, F. Kh. (James G. Dickson, translator) 1960 "To the History of Russian Science: Academician Nicholas IV an Vavilov on His 70th Anniversary (November 26, 1887-August 2, 1942)," The Quarterly Review of Biology, 35: 115-119.

External links

• The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov. The Story of Stalin's Persecution of One of the Great Scientists of the Twentieth Century. By Peter Pringle
• Science Saturday: Science Under Stalin; Peter Pringle’s “The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov”. Nikolai Vavilov: the Indiana Jones of crop diversity
• Vavilov, Centers of Origin, Spread of Crops
• Vavilov Centre for Plant Industry
• Theoretical Basis of our Researshes(sic)

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