Science Versus Ideology: The Contribution and Martyrdom of Nikolai Vavilov

This is the story of an outstanding plant geneticist who was determined to use modern science to rescue the starving citizens of his motherland from a series of frequent and severe famines but tragically fell prey to terrible socio-political changes that eventually made him die of starvation in a prison. This plant geneticist is Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, who made numerous, far-reaching, original contributions to basic and applied fields of genetics and agriculture. Some of his major contributions are the establishment of the largest seed bank in the world of his time, the idea of ‘homologous series in hereditary variations’, and the concepts of ‘centres of origin of cultivated plants’ and of ‘genetic erosion’.