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BIOGRAPHIES OF GREAT SCIENTISTS
Vavilov Nikolay Ivanovich Biography of a scientist
Directory / Biographies of great scientists
He can be called an encyclopedist of the XNUMXth century. Genetics, botany, with many of its ramifications, agronomy, selection theory, plant geography - this is far from the full range of his scientific research. Vavilov owns several fundamental discoveries in biology and a number of remarkable ideas that are still being developed by modern scientists. In addition, he was the first to put into practice a completely new, global approach to the study of the plant world as a whole on a global scale. The path paved by scientists has become the highway along which modern biology develops. And today it seems incomprehensible that for many years not only the discoveries, but the very name of Vavilov were hushed up in every possible way. Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov was born on November 13 (25), 1887 in Moscow in the family of an entrepreneur. His father went from a peasant in the Volokolamsk district to a major Russian industrialist. I must say that all of his children became well-known specialists, each in his own field of activity. But the most famous were two brothers, Nikolai and Sergei, who became presidents of two academies. The Vavilovs, in a large house on Srednyaya Presnya, had a rare collection of books. Ivan Ilyich bought them generously, the growing children read avidly. They played a lot of music in the house, and the children studied music. In 1906, Vavilov graduated from the Moscow Commercial School, having received sufficient knowledge in the natural sciences to enter the university, and at the same time, he quite tolerably mastered English, German and French. Then Nikolai entered the Agricultural Institute. Here Vavilov was formed not only as an agronomist, but also as a researcher. He himself later wrote that he had “little good memories left of the commercial school,” but that fate had thrown him into Petrovka was “apparently a fluke.” The ability to work hard, greedily, purposefully, without wasting time, set him apart from his peers. He moved from one department to another, trying his hand at different laboratories, developing topics that were far from each other. He conducted his first independent study at the Department of Zoology and Entomology - about naked slugs, snails, damaging winter crops and garden plants. The work was published by the Moscow Provincial Zemstvo and awarded the prize of the Polytechnic Museum, and at the end of the institute it was credited to Vavilov as a diploma. Already from his student years, Nikolai Vavilov conducted annual scientific expeditions. In those years, he went with a backpack to the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia. Vavilov's closest teacher was the famous biologist Dmitry Nikolaevich Pryanishnikov. On his initiative, Vavilov began studying plant breeding, and after graduating from the academy he moved to St. Petersburg, where he began working at the Bureau of Applied Botany. In 1912, Vavilov married Ekaterina Nikolaevna Sakharova. They studied together at the institute, worked together in the Poltava region. Katya was born and raised in the family of a Siberian merchant. I dreamed, almost from childhood, to become an agronomist. The young people settled in one of the two outbuildings of their father's house. There was no honeymoon. The young husband has already established his own Vavilov regime for himself. He was rarely seen in a cozy outbuilding on Srednyaya Presnya. Only at night, almost until dawn, his window shone. Many years later, a Leningrad reporter, ROSTA employee S. M. Shlitser, once asked Vavilov when he finds time for his personal life. "For my personal life?" Nikolai Ivanovich asked again. "But isn't science my personal life?" In 1913, Vavilov went to England and spent several months in the laboratory of the famous biologist W. Betson. His wife also went abroad with him. The Vavilovs settled in the town of Merton, not far from London. Ekaterina Nikolaevna, who spoke English better than her husband, sometimes came to his aid. But this was only at first, Nikolai quickly got used to it. Vavilov spent about a year in England. In Merton and on the farm of the University of Cambridge, he sowed samples of wheat, oats and barley brought with him, which he had already studied for immunity at the institute in 1911-1912. In this way, he checked the results obtained in the suburbs. In England he completed a paper on plant immunity to fungal diseases and published it in a journal founded by Batson. In Russian, this study, part of many years of work, was made public later. Nikolai Ivanovich was engaged in England not only in his specialty - immunology. As always and everywhere, he was interested in many things here too. Followed everything that happens in biology, especially in genetics, which caused heated debate; did not bypass the attention of agricultural science, innovations in agricultural technology. He spent a lot of time in the Linnean Society, participated in scientific meetings, studied collections. From London, the Vavilov couple went to Paris. The last point of the trip abroad was Germany, Jena, the laboratory of the famous evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel, who promoted the ideas of Darwin. However, they soon had to interrupt their scientific trip and return to their homeland, since the First World War began in Europe. The draft board temporarily released Nikolai Ivanovich from military service. While still in school, he injured his eye. In 1916 Vavilov visited Northern Iran, Fergana and the Pamirs. In these travels, the young scientist collected the most interesting scientific material, which allowed him to make two more major discoveries - to establish the laws of homological series and the distribution centers of cultivated plants. Soon Russia was stirred up by revolutionary events. Since 1917, Vavilov has lived permanently in Saratov, where he teaches at the university. His father did not recognize the new government, deciding that she did not need him, nor did he need her. I packed my suitcases, with which I once went to fairs, and left for Bulgaria. And a few days after the departure of Ivan Ilyich, on November 7, 1918, his grandson Oleg Nikolaevich Vavilov was born in an outbuilding on the Middle Presnya. Only in 1926, Nikolai Ivanovich persuaded his father to return, and immediately took him to his place in Leningrad. Ekaterina Nikolaevna moved with her son to her husband in Saratov in 1919, when Nikolai Ivanovich was finally given an apartment. Soon Vavilov's fundamental work "Plant Immunity to Infectious Diseases" is published, in which, for the first time in world science, the genetic roots of immunity were shown. This was the largest discovery, after which Vavilov became one of the world's leading biologists. While working in Saratov, Vavilov traveled around the Middle and Lower Volga regions and there also collected valuable scientific materials. Vavilov first spoke about his discovery at the congress of breeders in 1920. The Saratov Congress entered the history of science as one of its brightest pages. Upon its completion, a telegram was sent to the capital: “At the All-Russian Breeding Congress, a report of exceptional scientific and practical importance was heard by Prof. N. I. Vavilov, outlining the new foundations of the theory of variability, based mainly on the study of material on cultivated plants. in world biological science, corresponding to the discoveries of Mendeleev in chemistry, opens up the broadest prospects for practice. The congress adopted a resolution on the need to ensure the development of Vavilov's work on the widest scale by the state authorities." A year after the Saratov congress, Vavilov presented the law of homologous series at the International Congress on Agriculture, held in the United States. Overseas, the discovery of the Soviet professor made a strong impression. Vavilov's portraits were printed on the front pages of newspapers. After the congress, Vavilov managed to work in the laboratory of the outstanding geneticist Thomas Morgan, famous for his theory of heredity. True to his habit of continuing his work under any circumstances, Nikolai Ivanovich, while still on the ship, on his way to America, began to expound the law of homologous series in English. On the way back, he completed it and, stopping in England, handed over the manuscript to Batson. Having approved the work, he recommended it for printing, and it was soon published by the printing house of Cambridge University as a separate brochure. Later, in the early thirties, Academician V. L. Komarov wrote: “Parallel variability was noticed and pointed out by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the botanist Gordon, and C. Darwin, but only N. I. Vavilov studied it in full and portrayed accurately and definitely. Related species and genera, according to the law formulated by Vavilov, due to the similarity of their genotypes, largely repeat each other in their variability. In closely related plant species, different forms and varieties form rows corresponding to each other. Vavilov recognized the significant role of the external environment in the evolution of plants. But he attached paramount importance to the internal features of the plant organism itself; The paths of evolutionary development depend, first of all, on the natural capabilities of the organism itself. There is no chaos in the evolutionary development of organisms, as it may seem. Despite the stunning variety of living forms, variability fits into certain patterns. Vavilov undertook a bold and quite successful attempt to reveal these regularities by lifting one more of the veils hiding the secrets of nature. The idea of the unity of diversity is the main idea in Vavilov's remarkable work. Further, Vavilov developed the idea of the need for a systematic study of varieties within species, which is extremely important for both genetics and agronomy. The discovery of the law of homologous series has enriched biology. At the same time, this work serves plant growers and breeders for practical purposes, for a better knowledge and use of plants. Over the past decades, Vavilov's followers in our country and abroad have accumulated vast factual material confirming the universality of the law he discovered. Later, Vavilov published a widely known work on the centers of origin of cultivated plants. Both discoveries together became something like a botanical compass. It became more obvious what, how and where to look for planets in the plant world, which until recently seemed boundless. The application of the new law allowed Vavilov to raise the question that all cultivated plants of the Earth originated from several genetic centers. At the beginning of 1921, Vavilov, together with a group of employees, was invited to Petrograd, where he organized the All-Union Institute of Plant Growing in Tsarskoe Selo. The wife preferred to stay in Saratov, finding herself a job in the agronomic part. She had reasons for such a decision. She knew, or guessed, that Nikolai Ivanovich was infatuated with another woman. But, judging by her actions, she was not one of those wives who, in spite of everything, strive to maintain marriage bonds, sacrificing female pride and self-esteem. And Vavilov was not one of those men who, in the name of preserving the same ties, were ready to suppress, trample on the feeling that had seized him. The most painful, difficult decision was made. Elena Ivanovna Barulina, a student, and then a graduate student of Nikolai Ivanovich, who shared his feelings, for a long time did not dare to move to Petrograd, despite Vavilov's calls. She was in confusion. Only in the mid-twenties did she arrive in Leningrad and formally marry Vavilov. And in 1928, the son of Yuri was born to the Vavilovs. In his memoirs, placed in the collection Near Vavilov, Professor Gaisinsky writes: “Nikolai Ivanovich visited Rome relatively often in those years. On one of these trips, he was accompanied by his wife, Elena Ivanovna Barulina. She was his research assistant, cultural, a quiet and modest woman, extremely devoted to her husband." Vavilov was attentive to both sons. With the eldest, Oleg, he corresponded, even while traveling. After the death of their father, Oleg and Yuri were taken care of by their uncle Sergei Ivanovich. Both received university education, both became physicists. The last twenty years of Vavilov's short life are connected with Leningrad. Here, his many talents were fully revealed. Here he created a world-famous scientific center - the All-Union Institute of Plant Growing. Here he raised young scientists. Here he courageously repelled the attacks of militant ignoramuses and adventurers who planted, with the highest support, pseudoscience. In the twenties, Vavilov became the generally recognized leader of Soviet biological and agricultural science. Nikolai Ivanovich understood very well that his ideas needed to be supported by rich scientific material. Therefore, he developed a broad program of scientific expeditions, during which the institute staff had to collect plant samples in different countries in order to create a collection of genetic material at the institute. In 1924, Vavilov organized an expedition to Afghanistan, to areas where no European had set foot before him. Here he collects material of exceptional value. In 1926, Vavilov made a long trip to the countries of Europe, as well as North Africa. And again, the scientist brings the plant samples he has collected. In subsequent years, Vavilov visited Japan, China, and also South America. He had already collected so many samples of various plants that his theory was fully confirmed. Immediately after the trip, his second most important work "Centers of Origin of Cultivated Plants" was published. In 1929, Vavilov was elected an academician and almost simultaneously president of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. At that time, he was not yet 42 years old. The new president did a lot to establish broad contacts between Russian scientists and their colleagues from other countries. On his initiative, in 1937, an international congress of geneticists was held in the USSR. It was organized on the basis of the Institute of Genetics of the Academy of Sciences established by Vavilov. A whole galaxy of prominent scientists gathered there, headed by academician Koltsov, who created the school of experimental genetics. Scientists from all over the world began to come to Vavilov and Koltsov for an internship. One of Vavilov's students was, in particular, G. Meller, who later received the Nobel Prize for his discoveries. But at the same time, Vavilov's work became more and more difficult. Back in 1929, his closest collaborator, the greatest biologist S. Chetverikov, was expelled from work. Attacks began on Academician Koltsov as well. Perhaps Vavilov's fate would not have been so tragic if Trofim Lysenko had not appeared on his path, who left a bad memory of himself in science: after all, it was thanks to his work that Soviet genetics was liquidated and many scientists were repressed. Of course, the tragedy of Vavilov was only a small part of the arbitrariness that was going on under the Stalinist regime, but it meant the end of an entire branch of science - genetics. Beginning in 1939, with the tacit support of Stalin, Lysenko and his supporters carried out a real defeat of genetic science in the USSR. And in 1940, Vavilov was also arrested, who at that time was on a scientific expedition. The investigation into his case went on for a long time. But Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov did not stop his scientific work even in prison. The scientist died in prison on January 26, 1943. Nikolai Vavilov loved life in all its manifestations. He went to the theater when he found time. I read a lot, avidly, quickly, not content with just one scientific literature. Nature does not often endow people in the way that it endowed Vavilov, endowing him not only with a powerful research talent, but also with the ability to work most of the day, devoting not a third, but only a fifth of his life to sleep. He managed to dispose of the generous gift in the best possible way, taking a rightfully worthy place among the classics of natural science. The title page of the international journal "Genetics", published in London, is framed by a permanent double frame, inside which the names of the largest natural scientists are inscribed; among them, next to the names of Linnaeus, Darwin, Mendel, is the name of Vavilov. Author: Samin D.K.
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