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Nikolai Vavilov

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the 1990 biopic, see Nikolai Vavilov (film).
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Ivanovich and the family name is Vavilov.

Nikolai Vavilov
Vavilov in 1933
Born
Nikolaj Ivanovich Vavilov

(1887-11-25)25 November 1887[1][2]
Moscow, Russian Empire[1][2]
Died26 January 1943(1943-01-26) (aged 55)[1][2]
Saratov, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union[1][2]
Alma materMoscow Agricultural Institute
Known forCenters of origin
RelativesSergey Vavilov (brother)
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Author abbrev. (botany)Vavilov

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov ForMemRS,[3] HFRSE (Russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Вави́лов, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ vɐˈvʲiləf] ⓘ; 25 November [O.S. 13 November] 1887 – 26 January 1943) was a Russian and Soviet agronomist, botanist and geneticist who identified the centers of origin of cultivated plants. He devoted his life to the study and improvement of wheat, maize and other cereal crops that sustain the global population.

Vavilov became the youngest member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. He was a member of the USSR Central Executive Committee, a recipient of the Lenin Prize, and 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 in July 1941. Although his sentence was commuted to twenty years' imprisonment, he died in prison in 1943. In 1955, his death sentence was retroactively pardoned under Nikita Khrushchev. By the late 1950s, his reputation was publicly rehabilitated, and he began to be hailed as a hero of Soviet science.[4]

Early years and education

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Vavilov was born into a merchant family in Moscow, the older brother of physicist Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov. Despite his strict upbringing in the Orthodox Church, he was an atheist.[5]

His father had grown up in poverty due to recurring crop failures and food rationing, and Vavilov became obsessed from an early age with ending famine.[6]

Vavilov entered the Petrovskaya Agricultural Academy (now the Russian State Agrarian University – Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy) in 1906. During this time, he became known for carrying a pet lizard in his pocket wherever he went.[7] He graduated from the Petrovka in 1910 with a dissertation on snails as pests. From 1911 to 1912, he worked at the Bureau for Applied Botany and at the Bureau of Mycology and Phytopathology. From 1913 to 1914, he travelled in Europe and studied plant immunity, in collaboration with the British biologist William Bateson, who helped establish the science of genetics.[1]

Academic career

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Further information: Vavilov center
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.

Throughout his career, Vavilov went on a series of botanical-agronomic expeditions, collecting seeds from many parts of the world, and developing theories of their origins.[8] The first expedition, in 1916, was to Iran, where he collected 171 samples of legume crop seeds new to Russia, including beans, chickpeas, clovers, everlasting peas, lentils, and peas. These finds suggested to him that many cultivated plants including legumes came from a center of origin in Southwest Asia.[8] In 1917, Vavilov was a professor at the Faculty of Agronomy, University of Saratov.[9] In 1920, he became Director of the Bureau of Applied Botany in Leningrad.[9][10] Later expeditions visited places including the high plains of Central Asia, Afghanistan, the Khoresm oasis, Japan, and Taiwan.[8][11] The 1921 expedition visited Canada and the United States; Vavilov noted that North America was not a center of plant diversity, finding later that the centers of origin in the Americas were in Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America.[8] On his way back from America he visited Western Europe, collecting seeds in Britain, France, Holland, Germany, Poland, and Sweden in 1922.[8][9]

From 1924 to 1935, he was the director of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences at Leningrad.[9] He travelled the Mediterranean in 1926, visiting France, Greece, Spain, Portugal, North Africa and islands including Sardinia, Sicily, Crete, and Cyprus.[8] He took special interest in legumes such as the chickpea, which he found contributed to soil fertility and added protein to the diets of people and their animals around the Mediterranean. Another expedition visited Jordan, Palestine, and Syria; he returned with seeds of a white lupin from Palestine; they became useful in plant breeding as they came to maturity early.[8] Later expeditions went to Sudan and Ethiopia, where he identified a center of diversity in 1926.[8]

Vavilov created the world's first seed bank in the Institute of Plant Industry, Leningrad.[9]

In 1927, Vavilov presented his theory of centers of origin to the public at the Fifth International Congress of Genetics in Berlin.[12] In his institute at Leningrad, he created the world's largest collection of plant seeds;[8] by 1933, it contained over 148,000 specimens.[11] The collection became internationally famous, attracting praise from overseas but hostile attention from Joseph Stalin.[11]

In 1929 he went to China, Japan, and Korea, locating another center of cultivated plants in Japan.[8]

Vavilov (fifth from left) alongside geneticist Albert Boerger during his visit to Uruguay in 1932

In 1932, on his last expedition, he travelled widely in Latin America, visiting Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay after attending the Sixth International Congress of Genetics in Uruguay.[8]

Vavilov's work on the genetic diversity of crop plants across the world spanned the concept of centers of origin, the Darwinian problem of speciation, plant breeding, and a geographical approach to studies of crops,[8] as well as the law of homologous series in variation.[13] He is remembered for his contributions to the improvement of varieties of wheat, maize and other cereal crops that sustain the global population.[14] Vavilov was a man of enormous energy, described as having "a mind that never slept and a body which for its capacity for enduring physical hardships can seldom have been matched."[15] For example, he documented 3,000 types of Triticum vulgare wheat, calling them all "perfectly recognizable morphologically"; J. Scott McElroy comments that it is difficult to imagine the time, energy, and knowledge required to collect and describe so many types of one species.[15]

Eclipse

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Genetics conference debacle

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In 1932, during the sixth congress, Vavilov proposed holding the seventh International Congress of Genetics in the USSR in 1937. In 1935, Vavilov was elected chairman of the International Congress of Genetics for this purpose, but in 1936 the Politburo cancelled the event; the congress eventually took place in Edinburgh in 1939 instead. The Politburo further prohibited Vavilov from travelling abroad; during the Congress's opening ceremony an empty chair was placed on the stage as a symbolic reminder of Vavilov's involuntary absence.[16][9]

Lysenko's opposition

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Lysenko speaking at the Kremlin in 1935. Behind him on the far right is Joseph Stalin.

Trofim Lysenko joined the staff of the institute and began to oppose Vavilov, arguing that genetics was nonsense invented by the Roman Catholic monk Gregor Mendel, and proposing his own Lamarckian views of inheritance and evolution, and the idea of improving a crop variety by vernalization.[9] Lysenko had the ear of Stalin, who summoned Vavilov and mocked him in the Kremlin.[9] In 1936, Lysenko arranged for Vavilov to be sacked from his post as head of the institute.[17]

Death in prison

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Vavilov's mugshot, 1942

While collecting seeds in Ukraine in August 1940, Vavilov was arrested and imprisoned for his opposition to Lysenko;[17] he was accused of spying and ruining Soviet agriculture.[9] He was sentenced to death in 1941.[9] In 1942, his sentence was commuted to twenty years imprisonment.[9] In 1943, he died in prison in Saratov as a result of the harsh conditions.[18] The prison's medical documentation indicates that he had been admitted into the prison hospital a few days prior to his death and mentions the diagnoses of pneumonia, dystrophy and edema as well as general weakness as a complaint, but the death certificate only mentions "decline of cardiac activity".[18][19] Some authors assert that the actual cause of death was starvation.[20][21]

Personal life

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Vavilov's son Oleg with his first wife Yekaterina Sakharova was born in 1918.[5] That marriage ended in divorce in 1926, after which he married geneticist Elena Ivanovna Barulina, a specialist on lentils and assistant head of the institute's seed collection. Their son Yuri was born in 1928.[5]

Honors and distinctions

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Vavilov became the youngest member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.[9] He was a member of the USSR Central Executive Committee,[9] a recipient of the Lenin Prize in 1928,[9] and president of All-Union Geographical Society in 1931.[9] He was a fellow of the Royal Society (of London),[3] and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.[22]

Legacy

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Seedbank

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Maize diversity in Vavilov's office

The Leningrad seedbank was preserved and protected through the 28-month long Siege of Leningrad. While the Soviets had ordered the evacuation of art from the Hermitage Museum, they had not evacuated the 250,000 samples of seeds, roots, and fruits stored in what was then the world's largest seedbank. A group of scientists at the Vavilov Institute boxed up a cross section of seeds, moved them to the basement, and took shifts protecting them. Those guarding the seedbank refused to eat its contents, even though by the end of the siege in the spring of 1944, a number of them had died of starvation.[11][23][6]

In 1943, parts of Vavilov's collection, samples stored within the territories occupied by the German armies, mainly in Ukraine and Crimea, were seized by a German unit headed by Heinz Brücher. Many of the samples were transferred to the Schutzstaffel (SS) Institute for Plant Genetics, which had been established at Schloss Lannach [de] near Graz, Austria.[24]

Soviet rehabilitation

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Vavilov on a 1987 Soviet stamp

In 1955, Vavilov's life sentence was voided at a hearing of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, undertaken as part of a de-Stalinization effort to review Stalin-era death sentences in the time of Nikita Khrushchev.[25] By the late 1950s, his reputation was publicly rehabilitated, and he began to be hailed as a hero of Soviet science.[26]

Vavilovian mimicry

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Main article: Vavilovian mimicry

While studying the origins and evolutionary history of crop plants including cereals, Vavilov noted that weeds are inevitably included with crop seed by seed contamination. A consequence, he observed, was that the weed would evolve to appear progressively more like the crop: whenever a farmer, or a winnowing machine, removed as many weed seeds as possible, only the weed seeds that most closely resembled the crop would survive. Thus, natural selection would be applied unconsciously by the farmer (or by the winnowing machine used to separate the seeds). Vavilov described the cereal rye, which he believed had evolved in this way, as secondary crops. In 1982, Georges Pasteur proposed the name 'Vavilovian mimicry' for this process.[15][27]

Namesakes

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Today, a street in downtown Saratov bears Vavilov's name. Vavilov's monument in Saratov near the end of Vavilov Street was unveiled in 1997.[28][29] The USSR Academy of Sciences established the Vavilov Award (1965) and the Vavilov Medal (1968).[9] Today, the N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry in St. Petersburg still maintains one of the world's largest collections of plant genetic material.[30] In 1968, the institute was renamed after Vavilov in time for its 75th anniversary.[9] A minor planet, 2862 Vavilov, discovered in 1977 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh is named after him and his brother Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov.[31] The crater Vavilov on the far side of the Moon is named after him and his brother, a physicist.[32]

The standard author abbreviation Vavilov is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[33]

Media

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The story of the researchers at the Vavilov Institute during the Siege of Leningrad was fictionalized by novelist Elise Blackwell in her 2003 novel Hunger.[34] That novel was the inspiration for the Decemberists' song "When The War Came" in the 2006 album The Crane Wife,[35] which also depicts the Institute during the siege and mentions Vavilov by name.[36]

In 1987, the Shevchenko National Prize was awarded to Anatoliy Borsyuk (film director), Serhiy Dyachenko (script writer), and Oleksandr Frolov (camera) for the film Star of Vavilov (Russian: "Звезда Вавилова") about Vavilov's work.[37]

In 1990, a six part documentary entitled Nikolai Vavilov (Russian: Николай Вавилов) was created as a joint production of the USSR and East Germany.[38]

Works

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In Russian

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  • Земледельческий Афганистан. (1929) (Agricultural Afghanistan)
  • Селекция как наука. (1934) (Breeding as science)
  • Закон гомологических рядов в наследственной изменчивости. (1935) (The law of homology series in genetical mutability)
  • Учение о происхождении культурных растений после Дарвина. (1940) (The theory of origins of cultivated plants after Darwin)
  • Географическая локализация генов пшениц на земном шаре. (1929) (The Geographical Localization of Wheat Genes on the Earth)

In English

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  • The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated Plants (translated by K. Starr Chester). 1951. Chronica Botanica 13:1–366, link
  • Origin and Geography of Cultivated Plants (translated by Doris Löve). 1987. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
  • Five Continents (translated by Doris Löve). 1997. IPGRI, Rome; VIR, St. Petersburg.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Nikolay Ivanovich Vavilov. Encyclopaedia Britannica
  2. ^ a b c d Вавилов Николай Иванович. Great Soviet Encyclopedia
  3. ^ a b Harland, S. C. (1954). "Nicolai Ivanovitch Vavilov. 1885-1942". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 9 (1): 259–264. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1954.0017. JSTOR 769210. S2CID 86376257.
  4. ^ Hawkes, J. G. (1988). "N.I. Vavilov the man and his work" (PDF). Plant Genetic Resources Newsletter. 72: 3–5 – via IBPGR.
  5. ^ a b c Pringle, Peter (2008). The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin's Persecution of One of the Great Scientists of the Twentieth Century. Simon and Schuster. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-7432-6498-3. "Despite his strict upbringing in the Orthodox Church, Vavilov had been an atheist from an early age. If he worshipped anything, it was science".
  6. ^ a b Siebert, Charles (July 2011). "Food Ark". National Geographic. 220 (1): 122–126.
  7. ^ Pringle, Peter (2014). The murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The story of Stalin's persecution of one of the great scientists of the twentieth century. New York City: Simon & Schuster. pp. 22–23. ISBN 978-1-4165-6602-1. OCLC 892938236.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "The Significance of Vavilov's Scientific Expeditions". PGR Newsletter (124). Bioversity International: 23–32. 3 September 2010.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Smith, James P. (7 August 2021). "Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov". Humboldt State University. Retrieved 12 November 2024.
  10. ^ Kean, Sam. "The Tragedy of the World's First Seed Bank". Science History Institute. Retrieved 13 November 2024.
  11. ^ a b c d Parkin, Simon (12 November 2024). "Seeds of hope: how do you defend a precious food source in a famine?". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 November 2024.
  12. ^ Vavilov, Nikolai (1928). Geographische Zentren unserer Kulturpflanzen. In: Verhandlungen des V. Internationalen Kongresses für Vererbungswissenschaft Berlin 1927, Supplementband 1. Zeitschrift für induktive Abstammungs- und Vererbungslehre. pp. 342–369.
  13. ^ Popov I. Yu (2002). Periodical systems in biology Archived 14 May 2007 at the Wayback Machine.
  14. ^ Shumnyĭ, V. K. (2007). "Two brilliant generalizations of Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (for the 120th anniversary)". Genetika. 43 (11): 1447–1453. PMID 18186182.
    Zakharov, I. A. (2005). "Nikolai I Vavilov (1887–1943)". Journal of Biosciences. 30 (3): 299–301. doi:10.1007/BF02703666. PMID 16052067. S2CID 20870892.
    Crow, J. F. (2001). "Plant breeding giants. Burbank, the artist; Vavilov, the scientist". Genetics. 158 (4): 1391–1395. doi:10.1093/genetics/158.4.1391. PMC 1461760. PMID 11514434.
    Crow, J. F. (1993). "N. I. Vavilov, martyr to genetic truth". Genetics. 134 (1): 1–4. doi:10.1093/genetics/134.1.1. PMC 1205417. PMID 8514123.
    Cohen, B. M. (1991). "Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov: The explorer and plant collector a". Economic Botany. 45: 38–46. doi:10.1007/BF02860048. S2CID 27563223.
  15. ^ a b c McElroy, J. Scott (2014). "Vavilovian Mimicry: Nikolai Vavilov and His Little-Known Impact on Weed Science". Weed Science. 62 (2). Cambridge University Press: 207–216. doi:10.1614/ws-d-13-00122.1. S2CID 86549764.
  16. ^ Soyfer, Valery N. (2003). "Tragic History of the VII International Congress of Genetics". europepmc.org.
  17. ^ a b Cohen, Joel I.; Loskutov, Igor G. (2016). "Exploring the nature of science through courage and purpose: a case study of Nikolai Vavilov and plant biodiversity". SpringerPlus. 5 (1). doi:10.1186/s40064-016-2795-z. PMC 4958092. PMID 27504257.
  18. ^ a b "АКТ: о смерти заключенного" [ACT: on the death of a prisoner] (in Russian). Archived from the original on 16 September 2019.
  19. ^ [Шайкин В. Г. Николай Вавилов. — М.: Мол. гвардия, 2006. — 256 с.: ил. — (ЖЗЛ).]
  20. ^ Nabhan, Gary Paul. "How Nikolay Vavilov, the seed collector who tried to end famine, died of starvation". NPR. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 22 February 2014.
  21. ^ Graham, Loren R. (1993). Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History. Cambridge University Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-0-521-28789-0.
  22. ^ Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 4 January 2019.
  23. ^ Fowler, Cary (18 August 2010). "The Second Siege: Saving Seeds Revisited". HuffPost. Retrieved 12 October 2024.
  24. ^ Heinz Brücher and the SS botanical collecting command to Russia 1943 Archived 29 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine. PGR Newsletter 129. Bioversity International.
  25. ^ Pringle, Peter (2008). The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov. Simon & Schuster. p. 300. ISBN 978-0-7432-6498-3.
  26. ^ Atz, James W.; Winter, Robert J. (1968). "Further steps in the rehabilitation of N.I. Vavilov". The Journal of Heredity. 59 (5): 274–275. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a107716.
  27. ^ Pasteur, Georges (1982). "A classificatory review of mimicry systems". Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. 13: 169–199. doi:10.1146/annurev.es.13.110182.001125. JSTOR 2097066.
  28. ^ "Monument N. I. Vavilov". Wanderlog. Retrieved 15 November 2024.
  29. ^ "Все на митинг 10 марта в 11.30 у памятника Н.Вавилову ! (анонс)" [Everyone to the rally on March 10 at 11:30 at the monument to N. Vavilov! (announcement)]. saratov.bezformata.com (in Russian).
  30. ^ N.I.Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry at www.vir.nw.ru
  31. ^ Schmadel, Lutz D. (2003). Dictionary of Minor Planet Names (5th ed.). New York: Springer Verlag. p. 235. ISBN 978-3-540-00238-3.
  32. ^ "Moon Crater Named for Once-Disgraced Soviet Geneticist and Brother". The New York Times. 3 December 1968. p. 36. Retrieved 12 November 2024.
  33. ^ International Plant Names Index.  Vavilov.
  34. ^ Hunger: Kirkus Reviews.
  35. ^ "The Decemberists". Pitchfork. 30 October 2006. Retrieved 3 November 2022.
  36. ^ "When The War Came - The Decemberists". SongLyrics.com. Retrieved 3 November 2022.
  37. ^ "Фильм Звезда Вавилова" [Film 'Vavilov's Star'] (in Russian). Retrieved 3 November 2022.
  38. ^ "Nikolay Vavilov" (Biography, Drama). 1 February 1990. Retrieved 3 November 2022.

Further reading

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  • Alekseev, V. P. (1987). "Tvorchestvo Nikolaia Ivanovicha Vavilova i izuchenie istorii chelovechestva". Sovetskaia Etnografiia / Akademiia Nauk SSSR I Narodnyi Komissariat Prosveshcheniia RSFSR (6): 72–80. PMID 11636003. Not available online.
  • Bakhteev, F. K.; Dickson, J. G. (1960). "To the History of Russian Science: Academician Nicholas IV an Vavilov on His 70th Anniversary (November 26, 1887 – August 2, 1942)". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 35 (2): 115–9. doi:10.1086/403015. PMID 13686142. S2CID 225068057.
  • Berdyshev, G. D.; Savchenko, N. I.; Pomogaĭbo, V. M.; Shcherbina, D. M.; Samorodov, V. N. (1978). "Celebration of the 90th anniversary of the birth of N. I. Vavilov in the Ukraine". TSitologiia I Genetika. 12 (2): 177–179. PMID 356364.
  • Cohen, Barry Mendel (1980). Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov: His Life and Work. University of Texas at Austin (PhD thesis).
  • Delone, N. L. (1988). "Significance of the scientific heritage of N.I. Vavilov in the development of space biology (on the centenary of his birth)". Kosmicheskaia Biologiia I Aviakosmicheskaia Meditsina. 22 (6): 79–83. PMID 3066990.
  • Fresco, Louise O. (2021). "De Plantenjager" (The Planthunter, in Dutch), a novel about the research, work and life of professor Vavilov to increase the productivity of the Russian agriculture in the period 1900–1940.
  • Huerga Melcón, Pablo (2023): "Vavilov en España. Una Odisea en busca de la escanda" ISBN 978-8-41265-270-3
  • Khuchua, K. N. (1978). "Life and career of Academician N. I. Vavilov. On the 90th anniversary of his birth". TSitologiia I Genetika. 12 (2): 174–177. PMID 356363.
  • Kondrashov, V. (1978). "On the 90th birthday of N. I. Vavilov". Genetika. 14 (12): 2225. PMID 369949.
  • Kurlovich, B.S. "What is a species?".
  • Levina, E. S. (1987). "[N. I. Vasilov, historien de génétique] (Rus)". Voprosy Istorii Estestvoznaniia I Tekhniki (Institut Istorii Estestvoznaniia I Tekhniki (Akademiia Nauk SSSR)) (in Russian) (4): 34–43. PMID 11636235. Not available online.
  • Loskutov, Igor G. (1999). Vavilov and his Institute. A history of the world collection of plant genetic resources in Russia. International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, Rome, Italy. ISBN 92-9043-412-0
  • Nabhan, Gary Paul (2008). Where our Food Comes from: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine. ISBN 978-1-59726-399-3.
  • Parkin, Simon (15 October 2024). The Forbidden Garden: The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-6680-0766-2.
  • Raipulis, J. (1987). "Akademik N. I. Vavilov i Latyshskie biologi". Vestis. Izvestiia. Latvijas PSR Zinatnu Akademija (9): 71–76. PMID 11635329. Not available online.
  • Reznik, S. and Y. Vavilov (1997). "The Russian Scientist Nikolay Vavilov" (preface to English translation of:) Vavilov, N. I. Five Continents. IPGRI: Rome, Italy.
  • Vasina-Popova, E. T. (1987). "The role of N. I. Vavilov in the development of Soviet genetics and animal selection". Genetika. 23 (11): 2002–2006. PMID 3322935.
  • Vavilov, N. I. (1979). "Correspondence legacy of N. I. Vavilov". Genetika. 15 (8): 1525–1526. PMID 383572.
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