Nikolay Ivanovich Vavilov

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

"Our life is short - we must hurry" These words became the motto of the great Soviet scientist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov

November 26 of last year marked the 125th anniversary of the birth of N. I. Vavilov - an outstanding Soviet botanical geographer, geneticist, plant breeder, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, a scientist who made a huge contribution to the development of Russian and world agricultural science.

He was born in Moscow in the family of an entrepreneur. Nikolai Vavilov from early childhood loved to observe the flora and fauna. In 1906, he graduated from the Moscow Commercial School and entered the Moscow Agricultural Institute (formerly Petrovskaya, now the K. Timiryazev Academy of Agricultural Sciences) at the Faculty of Agronomy.

In 1908 he took part in his first student expedition to the Caucasus, and in the summer of 1910 he underwent a long agronomic practice at the Poltava Experimental Station.

After graduating from the institute in 1911, Vavilov remained at the Department of Private Agriculture (headed by D. N. Pryanishnikov) to prepare for a professorship. Subsequently, Dmitry Nikolaevich will say about his student: "Nikolai Ivanovich is a genius, and we do not realize this only because he is our contemporary."

At the Selection Station (at D. L. Rudzinsky's) Vavilov began researching the immunity of cultivated plants to parasitic fungi. In 1911-1912 he completed an internship in St. Petersburg with R. E. Regel (Bureau for Applied Botany and Breeding) and A. A. Yachevsky (Bureau for Mycology and Phytopathology).

In 1913, Vavilov was sent abroad (to England, France and Germany) for scientific work in genetic laboratories and seed companies.

Vavilov conducted the first experiments on studying the immunity of plants (cereals) together with Professor S. I. Zhegalov

In 1916, the military department sent Vavilov to Iran to find out the reasons for the mass poisoning by bread in the Russian troops. In the book "Five Continents" Vavilov writes: "The study of the varietal composition of the wheat of Northern Iran has revealed an exceptional infestation of their poisonous intoxicating chaff, as well as the prevalence of Fusarium here. There were often fields where the chaff contamination reached 50%. Hot bread made from wheat contaminated with chaff and also affected by fusarium caused the well-known phenomena of intoxication ("drunk bread")."

During this expedition, Vavilov began to study the centers of origin and diversity of cultivated plants, took wheat samples for experiments to study plant immunity, and also thought about the patterns of hereditary variability.

In 1917, Vavilov was elected to the position of assistant head of the Bureau for Applied Botany and Breeding. In the same year, Vavilov moved to Saratov, where he continued the experimental study of the immunity of agricultural plants (cereals) to infectious diseases. He studied 650 varieties of wheat and 350 varieties of oats, legumes, flax and other crops: he conducted a hybridological analysis of immune and affected varieties, revealed their physiological and anatomical features. In 1918 the monograph “Plant immunity to infectious diseases” was published. In 1940, Vavilov presented his last generalizing work "The laws of natural plant immunity to infectious diseases (keys to finding immune forms)". NI Vavilov created a new science - phytoimmunology. He substantiated the doctrine of plant immunity, concludedthat for phytoimmunological research it is necessary to take into account the biological characteristics of parasites, the characteristics of host plants in terms of genetic and ecological-geographical indicators.

In 1920, at the III All-Russian Congress on Breeding and Seed Production in Saratov, Vavilov presented his report "The Law of Homologous Series in Hereditary Variation." According to this law, species and genera genetically close, related to each other by the unity of origin, are characterized by similar series in hereditary variability. Knowing what forms of variation are found in one species, one can predict the presence of similar forms in a related species. The law of homological series of phenotypic variability in related species and genera is based on the idea of the unity of their origin through divergence from one ancestor in the process of natural selection. The law is universal for plants, animals, fungi, algae, and has practical significance. Vavilov wrote: “The variety of plants and animals is too great,to really imagine creating an exhaustive list of existing forms. There is a need to establish a number of laws and classification schemes."

In 1921, Vavilov and Yachevsky received an invitation from the American Phytopathological Society to take part in the International Congress on Agriculture, where Vavilov made a presentation on the law of homologous series. The trip was intense: a survey of the grain regions of the United States and Canada, negotiations on the purchase of seeds for Soviet Russia after the lean 1920 on behalf of the RSFSR People's Commissariat of Agriculture, the purchase of books and scientific equipment, contacts with scientists, acquaintance with scientific laboratories and breeding stations …

Two years later, Vavilov was elected director of the State Institute of Experimental Agronomy. In 1924, the Department of Applied Botany and Breeding was transformed into the All-Union Institute of Applied Botany and New Cultures (since 1930 - the All-Union Institute of Plant Industry (VIR), and Vavilov was approved by its director. Now the All-Russian Institute of Plant Industry bears the name of the great scientist. In 1929 Vavilov was appointed president of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL), organized on the basis of the State Institute of Experimental Agronomy.

Thanks to Vavilov, a system of agricultural research institutes, a network of selection stations and variety-testing farms in various soil and climatic conditions (from subtropics to tundra) were organized in the country. In just three years, Vavilov founded about a hundred scientific institutions - research institutes of vegetable farming, fruit growing, spinning bast-fibrous plants, potato farming, viticulture, rice growing, forage, oilseeds, cotton growing, flax, hemp, soybeans, tea, corn varieties, subtropical, medicinal and aromatic plants and others.

In 1930, Academician Vavilov was elected director of the Genetic Laboratory of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad (in 1934 it was transformed into the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences).

In the period from 1921 to 1940, under the leadership and with the participation of Vavilov, more than 110 botanical and agronomic expeditions were carried out around the world (except for Australia and Antarctica). The main goals of the expeditions are the search and collection of seeds of cultivated plants and their wild relatives, the study of the peculiarities of agriculture in various regions of the Earth.

From 1931 to 1940, Vavilov was president of the All-Union Geographical Society.

It was under the leadership of N. I. Vavilov as a result of expeditions that the world's largest collection of seeds of cultivated plants was created, which numbered more than 200 thousand samples in 1940 (of which 36 thousand were wheat samples, 23 thousand were fodder, 10 thousand were corn, etc..), in our time there are already more than 350 thousand of them. The obtained samples were subjected to detailed research, and many of them were used to develop new varieties with improved qualities.

In 1926, the work "Centers of origin of cultivated plants" was published, in which Vavilov, on the basis of data obtained in expeditions, named 7 main geographical centers of origin of cultivated plants: I. South Asian tropical; II. East Asian; III. Southwest Asian; IV. Mediterranean; V. Abyssinian; Vi. Central American; Vii. Andean (South American).

Vavilov was president and vice-president of several international scientific congresses, his scientific achievements were awarded with gold medals and prizes of foreign academies.

The life of this unique person ended tragically - on August 6, 1940, during a scientific expedition to the western regions of Belarus and Ukraine, he was arrested on the basis of trumped-up charges (most researchers believe T. D. Lysenko was involved in his arrest and death), in 1941 he was convicted and sentenced to death, which was commuted to 20 years in forced labor camps.

The harsh conditions of detention in the Saratov prison undermined his health, he died in 1943 and was buried in a common grave. In 1955, N. I. Vavilov was posthumously rehabilitated.

Academician D. N. Pryanishnikov actively opposed the arrest of Vavilov, petitioned for a mitigation of the sentence, even presented him for the Stalin Prize and nominated him for election to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

During his stay in the NKVD prison, Vavilov prepared a manuscript of the book "The history of the development of world agriculture (world resources of agriculture and their use)", which was destroyed.

According to the memoirs of his contemporaries, Nikolai Ivanovich was a sunny, benevolent person, always ready to help. Academician DS Likhachev, in a review of the book "Five Continents", called Vavilov the most charming, smartest and most talented scientist.

Academician EI Pavlovsky wrote: “Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov happily combined enormous talent, inexhaustible energy, exceptional working capacity, excellent physical health and rare personal charm. Sometimes it seemed that he was radiating some kind of creative energy that acts on others, inspires them and awakens new thoughts."

NI Vavilov was fluent in all major European languages. Under his editorship and with active participation, various works, summaries, collections, manuals and monographs on botany, genetics, and breeding were regularly published.

According to contemporaries, Vavilov had a phenomenal capacity for work - his working day lasted 16-18 hours and was scheduled for "half hours". He said: "Our life is short - we must hurry."