Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov ( rus, Никола́й Ива́нович Вави́лов, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ vɐˈvʲiləf, a=Ru-Nikolay_Ivanovich_Vavilov.ogg; – 26 January 1943) was a Russian and
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
agronomist,
botanist
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...
and
geneticist who identified the
centers of origin of
cultivated plants. He devoted his life to the study and improvement of
wheat
Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...
,
maize
Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American English, North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples of Mexico, indigenous ...
and other
cereal crops that sustain the global population.
Vavilov's work was criticized by
Trofim Lysenko, whose anti-
Mendelian concepts of plant biology had won favor with
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
. As a result, Vavilov was arrested and subsequently sentenced to death in July 1941. Although his sentence was commuted to twenty years' imprisonment, he died in prison in 1943. According to
Lyubov Brezhneva, he was thrown to his death into a pit of lime in the prison yard. In 1955 his death sentence was retroactively pardoned under
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
. By the 1960s his reputation was publicly rehabilitated and he began to be hailed as a hero of
Soviet science.
Life
Vavilov was born into a merchant family in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
, the older brother of physicist
Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov. His father had grown up in poverty due to recurring crop failures and food rationing, and Vavilov became obsessed from an early age with ending
famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompan ...
.
Vavilov entered the Petrovskaya Agricultural Academy (now the
Russian State Agrarian University – Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy) in 1906. During this time he became known for carrying a pet lizard in his pocket wherever he went.
He graduated from the Petrovka in 1910 with a dissertation on
snail
A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class ...
s as
pests
PESTS was an anonymous American activist group formed in 1986 to critique racism, tokenism, and exclusion in the art world. PESTS produced newsletters, posters, and other print material highlighting examples of discrimination in gallery represent ...
. From 1911 to 1912, he worked at the Bureau for Applied Botany and at the Bureau of
Mycology
Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans, including as a source for tinder, traditional medicine, food, and entheogen ...
and
Phytopathology
Plant pathology (also phytopathology) is the scientific study of diseases in plants caused by pathogens (infectious organisms) and environmental conditions (physiological factors). Organisms that cause infectious disease include fungi, oomy ...
. From 1913 to 1914 he travelled in Europe and studied plant
immunity
Immunity may refer to:
Medicine
* Immunity (medical), resistance of an organism to infection or disease
* ''Immunity'' (journal), a scientific journal published by Cell Press
Biology
* Immune system
Engineering
* Radiofrequence immunity de ...
, in collaboration with the British biologist
William Bateson
William Bateson (8 August 1861 – 8 February 1926) was an English biologist who was the first person to use the term genetics to describe the study of heredity, and the chief populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel following their rediscove ...
, who helped establish the science of
genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar work ...
.
[
From 1917 to 1920, he was a professor at the Faculty of Agronomy, ]University of Saratov
Saratov Chernyshevsky State University (russian: Саратовский государственный университет имени Н. Г. Чернышевского, СГУ, transcribed as SGU) is a major higher education and research ins ...
. His son Oleg (with his first wife Yekaterina Sakharova) was born in 1918.
From 1924 to 1935 he was the director of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences at Leningrad. Impressed with the work of Canadian phytopathologist
Plant pathology (also phytopathology) is the scientific study of diseases in plants caused by pathogens (infectious organisms) and environmental conditions (physiological factors). Organisms that cause infectious disease include fungi, oomy ...
Margaret Newton
Margaret Brown Newton (20 April 1887 – 6 April 1971) was a Canadian plant pathologist and mycologist internationally renowned for her pioneering research in stem rust ''Puccinia graminis'', particularly for its effect on the staple Canadian a ...
on wheat stem rust, in 1930 he attempted to hire her to work at the institute, offering a good salary and perks such as a camel caravan for her travel. She declined, but visited the institute in 1933 for three months to train 50 students in her research.
Vavilov's first marriage ended in divorce in 1926, after which he married geneticist Elena Ivanovna Barulina, a specialist on lentil
The lentil (''Lens culinaris'' or ''Lens esculenta'') is an edible legume. It is an annual plant known for its lens-shaped seeds. It is about tall, and the seeds grow in pods, usually with two seeds in each. As a food crop, the largest p ...
s and assistant head of the institute's seed collection. Their son Yuri was born in 1928.
While developing his theory on the centers of origin of cultivated plants, Vavilov organized a series of botanical-agronomic expeditions, and collected seeds from every corner of the globe. In 1927, he presented the centers of origin to the public on the Fifth International Congress of Genetics in Berlin (''V. Internationaler Kongress für Vererbungswissenschaft Berlin''). In Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
, he created the world's largest collection of plant seeds. Vavilov also formulated the law of homologous series in variation. He was a member of the USSR Central Executive Committee, President of All-Union Geographical Society and a recipient of the Lenin Prize.
In 1932, during the sixth congress, Vavilov proposed holding the seventh International Congress of Genetics
The International Congress of Genetics (ICG) is a five yearly conference for geneticists. The first ICG was held in 1898. Since 1973 It has been organized by the International Genetics Federation (IGF). The aim of the congress is to reflect on pro ...
in the USSR. After some initial resistance by the organizing committee, in 1935 it agreed to hold the seventh congress in Moscow in 1937. The Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences decided to support the idea and asked the Communist Party for its approval, which it gave on 31 July 1935. Vavilov was elected chairman of the International Congress of Genetics. However, on 14 November 1936 the Politburo
A politburo () or political bureau is the executive committee for communist parties. It is present in most former and existing communist states.
Names
The term "politburo" in English comes from the Russian ''Politbyuro'' (), itself a contracti ...
decided to cancel the congress. The seventh International Congress of Genetics was postponed until 1939 and took place in Edinburgh instead. The Politburo had decided to forbid Vavilov from travelling abroad and during the Congress's opening ceremony an empty chair was placed on the stage as a symbolic reminder of Vavilov's involuntary absence.
Vavilov encountered the young Trofim Lysenko and at first he encouraged Lysenko's work. However, Vavilov changed his mind and became an outspoken critic of Lysenko, because Lysenko did not believe in genetics and Vavilov feared that Lysenko's ideas could be disastrous for Soviet agriculture. Vavilov publicly criticized Lysenko both at home and while on foreign trips. However, Stalin believed in Lysenko's theories, and as a result, so did the rest of the Soviet government. The Soviet authorities suspected that Vavilov was trying to sabotage Soviet agriculture with bad science, and their suspicions were aggravated by his associations with other scientists who had been convicted of espionage, some of whom falsely implicated Vavilov in counter-revolutionary activities. As a result, Vavilov was arrested on 6 August 1940, while on an expedition to Ukraine. He was sentenced to death in July 1941. In 1942 his sentence was commuted to twenty years imprisonment. In 1943, he died in prison as a result of the harsh conditions. The prison's medical documentation indicates that he had been admitted into the prison hospital a few days prior to his death and mention the diagnoses of lung inflammation, dystrophy
Dystrophy is the degeneration of tissue, due to disease or malnutrition, most likely due to heredity.
Types
* Muscular dystrophy
** Duchenne muscular dystrophy
** Becker's muscular dystrophy
** Myotonic dystrophy
* Reflex neurovascular d ...
and edema
Edema, also spelled oedema, and also known as fluid retention, dropsy, hydropsy and swelling, is the build-up of fluid in the body's tissue. Most commonly, the legs or arms are affected. Symptoms may include skin which feels tight, the area ma ...
as well as general weakness as a complaint, but as for the immediate cause of death, the death certificate only mentions 'decline of cardiac activity'.
(in Russian) Some authors assert that the actual cause of death was starvation.
The Pavlovsk Experimental Station, Leningrad seedbank was preserved and protected through the 28-month long Siege of Leningrad
The siege of Leningrad (russian: links=no, translit=Blokada Leningrada, Блокада Ленинграда; german: links=no, Leningrader Blockade; ) was a prolonged military blockade undertaken by the Axis powers against the Soviet city of ...
. While the Soviets had ordered the evacuation of art from the Hermitage Museum
The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the larges ...
, they had not evacuated the 250,000 samples of seeds, roots, and fruits stored in what was then the world's largest seedbank. A group of scientists at the Vavilov Institute boxed up a cross section of seeds, moved them to the basement, and took shifts protecting them. Those guarding the seedbank refused to eat its contents, even though by the end of the siege in the spring of 1944, a number of them had died of starvation.
In 1943, parts of Vavilov's collection, samples stored within the territories occupied by the German armies, mainly in Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inva ...
and Crimea
Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a p ...
, were seized by a German unit headed by Heinz Brücher. Many of the samples were transferred to the Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe ...
(SS) Institute for Plant Genetics, which had been established at near Graz
Graz (; sl, Gradec) is the capital city of the Austrian state of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna. As of 1 January 2021, it had a population of 331,562 (294,236 of whom had principal-residence status). In 2018, the popula ...
, Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
.
The Royal Society of Edinburgh mentions Vavilov in the list of its former fellows, indicating that he died in a Soviet workcamp in Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...
on 26 January 1943. However, he actually died in a Soviet prison in Saratov
Saratov (, ; rus, Сара́тов, a=Ru-Saratov.ogg, p=sɐˈratəf) is the largest city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River upstream (north) of Volgograd. Saratov had a population of 901, ...
.
Vavilov was an atheist.[Pringle, Peter (2008). The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin's Persecution of One of the Great Scientists of the Twentieth Century. Simon and Schuster. p. 137. . "Despite his strict upbringing in the Orthodox Church, Vavilov had been an atheist from an early age. If he worshipped anything, it was science."]
Posthumous rehabilitation
In 1955, Vavilov's life sentence was pardoned at a hearing of the , undertaken as part of a de-Stalinization
De-Stalinization (russian: десталинизация, translit=destalinizatsiya) comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the thaw brought about by ascension ...
effort to review Stalin-era death sentences. By the 1960s his reputation was publicly rehabilitated and he began to be hailed as a hero of Soviet science.
Conspiracy allegations
The warrant for Vavilov's arrest was issued by 1st Lt. Vladimir Ruzin of the NKVD, with the approval of Mikhail Pankratyev, the Deputy Prosecutor of the USSR, and Lavrenty Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; rus, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavréntiy Pávlovich Bériya, p=ˈbʲerʲiə; ka, ლავრენტი ბერია, tr, ; – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik ...
. Ruzin accused Vavilov of foreign espionage and sabotage.
Legacy
Namesakes
Today a street in downtown Saratov bears Vavilov's name. Vavilov's monument in Saratov near the end of the Vavilov street was unveiled in 1997. The square near the monument is a common place for opposition rallies. Another monument to him is located near the entrance to the Resurrection cemetery in Saratov, where Vavilov is buried. The USSR Academy of Sciences established the Vavilov Award (1965) and the Vavilov Medal (1968).
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. 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 Vavilov in time for its 75th anniversary.
A minor planet
According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term ''minor ...
, 2862 Vavilov
2862 Vavilov, provisional designation , is a stony background asteroid and exceptionally slow rotator from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 7 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 15 May 1977, by Soviet astronomer Niko ...
, discovered in 1977 by Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh
Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh (russian: Никола́й Степа́нович Черны́х) (6 October 1931 – 25 May 2004Казакова, Р.К. Памяти Николая Степановича Черных'. Труды Государст ...
is named after him and his brother Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov. The crater ''Vavilov Vavilov (russian: Вави́лов) is a Russian surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Andrey Petrovich Vavilov (b. 1961), Russian politician and businessman
* Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943), Russian geneticist
* Sergey Ivanovich Vavi ...
'' on the far side of the Moon is also named after him and his brother.
Media
The story of the researchers at the Vavilov Institute during the Siege of Leningrad was fictionalized by novelist Elise Blackwell
Elise Blackwell is an American novelist and writer. She is the author of five novels, as well as numerous short stories and essays. Her books have been translated into five languages, adapted for the stage, and served as the inspiration for the s ...
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
''The Crane Wife'' is the fourth album by The Decemberists, released in 2006. It was produced by Tucker Martine and Chris Walla, and is the band's first album on the Capitol Records label. The album was inspired by a Japanese folk tale, and cent ...
'', which also depicts the Institute during the siege and mentions Vavilov by name.
In 1987, the Shevchenko National Prize
Shevchenko National Prize ( uk, Націона́льна пре́мія Украї́ни і́мені Тараса́ Шевче́нка; also ''Shevchenko Award'') is the highest state prize of Ukraine for works of culture and arts awarded since ...
was awarded to Anatoliy Borsyuk (film director), Serhiy Dyachenko (script writer), and Oleksandr Frolov (camera) for the film ''Star of Vavilov'' ( Russian: "Звезда Вавилова") about Vavilov's work.
In 1990, a six part documentary entitled Nikolai Vavilov ( Russian: Николай Вавилов), was created as a joint production of the USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nati ...
and East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In t ...
.
Season 1, Episode 4 of the 2020 science documentary series, Cosmos: Possible Worlds starring Neil deGrasse Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson ( or ; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a p ...
and based on the original series by Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on ex ...
, was titled "Vavilov" and detailed his life.
Works
*Земледельческий Афганистан. (1929) (''Agricultural Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...
'')
*Селекция как наука. (1934) (''Breeding 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'')
*Географическая локализация генов пшениц на земном шаре. (1929) (''The Geographical Localization of Wheat Genes on the Earth'')
Works in English
*''The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated Plants'' (translated by K. Starr Chester). 1951. Chronica Botanica 13:1–366
link
*''Origin and Geography of Cultivated Plants'' (translated by Doris Löve
Doris Benta Maria Löve, ''née'' Wahlén (born 2 January 1918 in Kristianstad – deceased 25 February 2000 in San Jose, California) was a Swedish systematic botanist, particularly active in the Arctic.
Biography
Doris Löve was born in Krist ...
). 1987. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
*
Five Continents
' (translated by Doris Löve
Doris Benta Maria Löve, ''née'' Wahlén (born 2 January 1918 in Kristianstad – deceased 25 February 2000 in San Jose, California) was a Swedish systematic botanist, particularly active in the Arctic.
Biography
Doris Löve was born in Krist ...
). 1997. IPGRI, Rome; VIR, St. Petersburg.
See also
* VASKhNIL (the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union)
*All-Russian Institute of Plant Industry
The Institute of Plant Industry, Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry or All-Russian Research Institute of Plant Industry (in russian: Всероссийский институт растениеводства им. Н. И. Вавилова), as ...
*Vavilovian mimicry
In plant biology, Vavilovian mimicry (also crop mimicry or weed mimicry) is a form of mimicry in plants where a weed evolves to share one or more characteristics with a domesticated plant through generations of artificial selection. It is named ...
* Vavilov Center
*Lysenkoism
Lysenkoism (russian: Лысенковщина, Lysenkovshchina, ; uk, лисенківщина, lysenkivščyna, ) was a political campaign led by Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko against genetics and science-based agriculture in the mid-20th ce ...
References
Further reading
* Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine by Gary Paul Nabhan 2008
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Kurlovich, B.S. WHAT IS A SPECIES? ''https://sites.google.com/site/biodiversityoflupins/15-objective-regularities-in-the-variability-of-chatacters/what-is-a-species''
* Reznik, S. and Y. Vavilov 1997 "The Russian Scientist Nikolay 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.
*
*''Vavilov and his Institute. A history of the world collection of plant genetic resources in Russia'', Loskutov, Igor G. 1999. International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, Rome, Italy.
External links
Vavilov, Centers of Origin, Spread of Crops
Vavilov Center for Plant Industry
Genetic Resources of Leguminous Plants in the N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry
* ttps://www.marxists.org/subject/science/essays/speeches.htm#vavilov Speech at the 1939 Conference on Genetics and Selectionbr>Theoretical base of our researches
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vavilov, Nikolai Ivanovich
1887 births
1943 deaths
Scientists from Moscow
People from Moskovsky Uyezd
All-Russian Central Executive Committee members
Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union members
Russian atheists
Russian agronomists
Soviet botanists
Soviet agronomists
20th-century Russian botanists
Botanists with author abbreviations
Russian geneticists
Soviet geneticists
Russian geographers
Soviet geographers
Russian explorers
20th-century geographers
Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Members of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
Academicians of the VASKhNIL
Foreign Members of the Royal Society
Deaths by starvation
Soviet people who died in prison custody
Prisoners who died in Soviet detention
Soviet rehabilitations