Prounciation: [vavilof]

Dates: (1887–1943)

Sex: m

Plant geneticist, born in Moscow, Russia. He studied at Cambridge and at the John Innes Horticultural Institute, London. He was appointed by Lenin to direct Soviet agricultural research as director of the All Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1920). He established 400 research institutes and built up a collection of 26 000 varieties of wheat. This led him to formulate the principle of diversity, which postulates that, geographically, the centre of greatest diversity represents the origin of a cultivated plant. His international reputation was challenged by the politico-scientific ‘theories’ of Lysenko, who denounced him at a genetics conference (1937) and gradually usurped his position. Vavilov was arrested as a ‘British spy’ in 1940, and is thought to have died of starvation in a Siberian labour camp.

Lenin, Lysenko, genetics