Nikolai Ivanovitch Vavilov Biography

Nicolai Ivanovich Vavilov made significant contributions to the field of modern plant genetics. His identification of plant centers of origin, and the relationship between cultivated plants and their wild cousins, revolutionized the means by which scientists evaluate plant populations. Devoting a great deal of his career to the cause of agricultural improvement, he was a consummate traveler, fervent researcher, and a passionate advocate of the practical application of genetic research.

Vavilov was born in Moscow. He studied genetics at Cambridge and the John Innes Horticultural Institution in London under the direction of William Bateson (1861-1926). He returned to Russia and took a position as a professor of botany at the University of Saratov. In 1921, he left the university to work for the government and became director of the Bureau of Applied Botany in St. Petersburg. His next position was as director of the All--Union V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences. During his tenure at the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the government began programs to advance the scientific research. Vavilov aided in the establishment of nearly 400 research institutes throughout the Soviet Union.

Vavilov was an avid traveler. By 1933, he had completed numerous research expeditions, visiting over 40 countries and collecting some 80, 000 plant specimen, a third of which were various types of wheat. An especially difficult expedition to Afghanistan in 1924 earned him a gold medal from the Russian Geographic Society. On these voyages, Vavilov began to formulate his theories on plant populations based upon his observations in the field. He published the results of his study in The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated Plants. Vavilov concluded that the place of origin for any cultivated plant could be found in the region where varieties of the plant's non--cultivated relatives were most prolific and best adapted. He later expanded his theory. Postulating that a plant's center of origin is where the genetic diversity of a plant species is greatest, he identified over a dozen such global points of origin. When published, Vavilov's conclusions became known respectively as the law of homologous series in variation (1920) and the theory of the centers of origin of cultivated plants (1926). The theories provided a structure for charting movement, adaptation, and change within plant populations.

Vavilov's theories of plant populations, and their origins, remain important today. As natural habitats of wild plant species are increasingly threatened on a global scale, conservation--geneticists are concerned with its impact on the genetic pools of both wild and cultivated plants.

Despite his frequent research expeditions, Vavilov remained committed to using plant--genetics to improve Soviet agriculture. Vavilov used his prominence to further promote the establishment of agricultural research institutes. To facilitate better communication among scientists who were studying the breeding and raising of plant--crops, Vavilov organized conferences, societies, and institutes. He was a foreign member of six national academies of science, and served as the director of the Soviet Genetics Institute.

Although Vavilov received great acclaim from the international scientific community for his contributions to the study and understanding of botanical populations, his academic standing in the Soviet Union was later shattered by followers of Trofim Desnovich Lysenko (1898-1976), the government's Director of Genetics. Lysenko did not recognize the validity of the laws of heredity, and instead advocated that a plant's genetics could be altered (without hybridization or breeding) simply by changing its environmental context. He sought to integrate his scientifically unsound ideas into Soviet agriculture, but Vavilov and handful other geneticists publicly opposed Lysenko's plan and recommended instead a farming model similar to the United States. Lysenko denounced Vavilov on several occasions, and in 1940 petitioned for his arrest. Vavilov was arrested and sent to a concentration camp for political prisoners near Saratov. He died, still imprisoned, in 1943. Vavilov's work regained prestige in the early 1960s after Lysenkoism was discredited.