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Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov ( November 25/(November 13), 1887 -- January 26 1943) was a prominent Russian biologist: botanist and geneticist.

He was born to a family of a commersant.

He organized a series of botanical-agromomical expeditions all over the world in the development of his theory about centers of origin of cultured plants and created the largest in the world collection of plant seeds (which was tragically saved during the Siege of Leningrad).

He was a member of the USSR Central Executive Committee, President of All-Union Geographical Society and a recipient of the Lenin Prize.

In 1940 he was repressed as a defender of " bourgeois pseudoscience" genetics in struggle with Lysenkoism and died in prison in 1943.

1 Timeline

• 19111911 is a common year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). Events January-June January 1 Northern Territory is separated from South Australia January 3 In London, a shootout between Russian anarchists and the Scots Guard January 10 Major Jimmi - graduated from the Moscow Agricultural Institute
• 1917Events January 2 The Royal Bank of Canada takes over Quebec Bank. January 22 World War I: President Woodrow Wilson calls for "peace without victory" in Europe. January 25 The Danish West Indies is sold to the United States for $25 million January 25 Anti-- 1921Events January 2 The first religious radio broadcast ( KDKA AM in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) January 2 Spanish liner Santa Isabel sinks off Villa Garcia 244 dead January 2 DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park San Francisco opens. January 20 Republic of Turke - professor of agronomy departmen of the Saratov University
• 1919 - theory of the immunity for plants.
• 1920 - formulation of the law of homology series in genetical mutability
• 1921(- 1940) - chairman of the applied botanics and selection section in Petrograd, which in 1924 was reorganized into the All-Union Institute of Applied Botanics and New Crops and in 1930, into the All-Union Institute of Plant Cultivation, with Vavilov being direcor until August, 1940.
• 1926 - Lenin Award
• 1930— 1940 - head of the genetics laboratory in Moscow, later reorganized into the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
• 1931— 1940 - President of the All-Union Geographical Society.
• 1940 - repressed.
• 1943 - died imprisoned, in Saratov.

The USSR Academy of Sciences established the Vavilov Award ( 1965) and the Vavilov Medal ( 1968).