Nikolai Vavilov
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Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov was a Russian and Soviet agronomist, botanist and geneticist who identified the centers of origin of cultivated plants. His research focused on improvement of wheat, maize an
Vavilov in 1933
Vavilov's 1924 scheme of centers of origin suggested that plants were domesticated in China, Hindustan, Central Asia, Asia Minor, Mediterranean, Abyssinia, Central and South America.
Vavilov created the world's first seed bank in the Institute of Plant Industry, Leningrad.
Vavilov (fifth from left) alongside geneticist Albert Boerger during his visit to Uruguay in 1932
Trofim Lysenko
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Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist. He rejected Mendelian genetics in favour of his own idiosyncratic, pseudoscientific ideas later termed Lysenkoism.
Nikolai Vavilov
…president of All-Union Geographical Society. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Vavilov's work was criticized by Trofim Lysenko, whose anti-Mendelian concepts of plant biology had won favor with Joseph Stalin. As a result, Vavilov was arrested and subsequently sentenced to death…
Lysenko in 1938
Verbatim report of the 1948 VASKhNIL session
Lysenko in 1959
Lysenko's grave at the Kuntsevo Cemetery in Moscow