Trofim Lysenko
Soviet agronomist and biologist (1898-1976) · Russia · Scientists · Died at 78
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Something wrong?The Soviet agronomist who turned junk science into state doctrine, then used political power to jail the geneticists who knew better - while Soviet crops failed for decades.
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About this person
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko rejected Mendelian genetics in favour of his own pseudoscientific theories, later called Lysenkoism. In 1940 he became director of the Institute of Genetics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. From that position he suppressed dissent, discredited critics, and elevated his anti-Mendelian ideas to official policy. Scientists who refused to renounce genetics were dismissed and left destitute; several were imprisoned, including the botanist Nikolai Vavilov. His ideas contributed to lower agricultural yields in the Soviet Union from the late 1930s until his downfall in the mid-1960s, and spread to other Eastern Bloc countries and China from the late 1940s through the mid-1950s.
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