Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov , 1887-1943?, Russian botanist and geneticist. He is reported to have died in a Soviet concentration camp after losing political favor to Trofim Lysenko , whose theories he opposed. He served earlier as professor at the Leningrad Agricultural Institute and as director of the All-Union Institute of Plant Industry. In 1918 he discovered in Transcaucasia a variety of wheat that grows at an altitude of nearly 3,000 ft (914 m) and is resistant to rust and mildew. His genetic study of wheat variations led to an attempt to trace the locales of origin of various crops by determining the areas in which the greatest number and diversity of their species are to be found. In 1936 he reported that his studies indicated Ethiopia and Afghanistan as the birthplaces of agriculture and hence of civilization. Vavilov divided cultivated plants into those that were domesticated from wild forms, e.g., oats and rye, and those known only in the cultivated form, e.g., corn. After the ouster and death of Lysenko, Vavilov's work regained prestige in the Soviet Union. His Immunity of Plants to Infectious Diseases (1918) includes a summary in English.

Vavilov, NikolaiIvanovich (1887–1943)A Russian plant geneticist whose extensive field studies, in Iran, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, China, and Central and South America, led him to the view that the greatest variation in species occurs in certain restricted areas (centres of diversity) which he believed identified the regions in which those species originated (centres of origin). He returned from his travels with a large collection of specimens he intended to use for study and to breed new varieties. He was professor of botany at the University of Saratov (1917–21) and later became head of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1929, and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in 1942. He was opposed by T. D.Lysenko, who had him removed from his positions in 1940, and Vavilov is believed to have spent the years from 1940 in prison and to have died at Magadan, Siberia.

Vavilov, Nikolai Ivanovich (1887–1943) A Russian plant geneticist whose extensive field studies, in Iran, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, China, and Central and S. America, led him to the view that the greatest variation in species occurs in certain restricted areas (centres of diversity) which he believed identified the regions in which those species originated (centres of origin). He returned from his travels with a large collection of specimens he intended to use for study and to breed new varieties. He was professor of botany at the University of Saratov (1917–21) and later became head of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1929, and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in 1942. He was opposed by T. D. Lysenko, who had him removed from his positions in 1940. Vavilov is believed to have spent the years from 1940 in prison and to have died at Magadan, Siberia.