Nikolai Vavilov

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Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (Николай Иванович Вавилов, November 25/(November 13), 1887— January 26 1943) was a prominent Russian botanist and geneticist best known for having identified the centres of origin of cultivated plants.

He was born into a merchant family in Moscow. Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov a renowned physicist, was his brother.

After graduating from the Moscow Agricultural Institute, he worked at the Bureau for Applied Botany and at the Bureau of Mycology and Phytopathology during the years 1911-1912. After this, in 1913-1914 he travelled to Europe and studied plant immunity, in collaboration with Professor William Bateson, who founded the science of genetics.¹

He organized a series of botanical-agronomic expeditions all over the world in the development of his theory about centers of origin of cultivated plants and created the largest collection of plant seeds in the world (which was diligently preserved even throughout the Siege of Leningrad). He formulated the law of homologous series in variation. ([1])

He was a member of the USSR Central Executive Committee, President of All-Union Geographical Society and a recipient of the Lenin Prize.

In 1940 he was repressed as a defender of "bourgeois pseudoscience" genetics in struggle with Lysenkoism and died of malnutrition in prison in 1943. Ironically, a major part of his genetic samples was seized by a German collecting commando set up in 1943, and the samples were transferred to the SS Institute for Plant Genetics, which had been established at the Lannach castle near the city of Graz in Austria.([2]) However, the commando was only able to collect the samples stored in agricultural research stations located within the territories occupied by the German armies, mainly in Ukraine and Crimea. The main genebank in Leningrad was thus not affected. The leader or the German commando 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 ([3]). The Institute originated as the Bureau of Applied Botany in 1894, but 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. Nikolai I. Vavilov was the head of the institute during 1921–1940. In 1968 the Institute was renamed after Vavilov in time for its 75 anniversary.

The standard botanical author abbreviation Vavilov is applied to species he described.

1 Timeline
2 Works
- 2.1 Works in English
3 External link

[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.
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.
1940 - arrested.
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