Nikolai Vavilov Totally Explained

Everything about Nikolai Vavilov totally explained

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (– 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.

Biography

Vavilov was born into a merchant family in Moscow, the older brother of renowned physicist Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov. After graduating from the Moscow Agricultural Institute (with the dissertation (1910) on snails as pests), he worked at the Bureau for Applied Botany and at the Bureau of Mycology and Phytopathology during the years 1911-1912. From 1913 through 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 largest collection of plant seeds in the world (a seedbank that was diligently preserved even throughout the 28 months of the Siege of Leningrad, despite starvation and one of Nikolai's assistants starving to death surrounded by edible seeds). He 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.
   Vavilov repeatedly criticised the non-Mendelian concepts of Trofim Lysenko. As a result of this controversy, Vavilov was arrested in August and died of malnutrition in a prison in 1943. The majority of his genetic samples were seized by a German collecting command 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 Graz, Austria. However, the command 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 gene bank in Leningrad was thus 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 ((External Link

)). 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 from 1921 to 1940. In 1968 the Institute was renamed after Vavilov 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. 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," found on their album The Crane Wife.
During most of his career Vavilov was assisted by his deputy Georgy Balabajev.

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).

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 92-9043-302-7Further Information

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