Nikolai Vavilov

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Nikolai Vavilov
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.

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[edit] 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 1940 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 in August 1943 and died of malnutrition in a prison that year. 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 Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry in St.Petersburg still maintains one of the world's largest collections of plant genetic material ([1]). 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 75 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.[4] Vavilov crater on the Far side of the Moon is also named after him and his brother since 1970. He was also referenced in the Decemberists song When The War Came in the album The Crane Wife.

The standard author abbreviation Vavilov is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.[5]

[edit] Timeline

  • 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).

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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

[edit] See also

  • VASKhNIL (the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union)
  • 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.

[edit] 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. ^ Schmadel, Lutz D. (2003). Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, 5th, New York: Springer Verlag, p. 235. ISBN 3540002383. 
  5. ^ Brummitt, R. K.; C. E. Powell (1992). Authors of Plant Names. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. ISBN 1-84246-085-4. 

[edit] External links