Lyssenkos work

Lyssenko was to the reign of Josef Stalin the prominent biologist of the USSR. It held - freely after Lamarck - the opinion that acquired characteristics were left and negated the existence of genes as antisocialistic and therefore wrong. It examined its theories in large-scale agriculture projects. Thus it sowed wheat under unfavorable climatic conditions and found thereupon in the next year rye plants on the field. Rye plants of neighbouring fields had actually sown themselves. Lyssenko interpreted against it such results as voucher for its theses.

Substantial theses Lyssenkos, e.g. in its main paper on the conference of the academy of the agriculture sciences of the USSR in August 1948 in Moscow spoken, were:

1. The transmission is a characteristic of the entire organism. No discrete hereditary factors or genes exist.
2. Hereditary changes can be induced by changed environmental and living conditions. The character of the changes is adequate the character of the inducing conditions.
3. In the argument with the environmental condition acquired characteristics are left.
4. With plants purposeful changes can be induced by grafting during the process of the vegetative Hybridisation; it does not exist a difference in principle to the sexual Hybridisation.
5. Hereditary summer forms can be obtained by raising of winter forms without cooling shock with grain.
6. Kinds of cultivated plant such as wheat and rye can be converted by suitable environmental condition into one another.

By good relations with the Soviet secret service NKWD it succeeded to it to make critics mouth dead. In particular after its appointment as the president of the academy for agriculture sciences (AdL) the Soviet Union in the year 1938 he let pursue other biologists, above all Genetiker, politically and in Gulags bring. Not least Lyssenko was responsible for the death of the important biologist and founder of the academy, Nikolai Iwanowitsch Wawilow, in the year 1943.

Lyssenko understood it to provide by good relations within the CPSU and to Stalin personally substantial resources. On its instruction substantial surfaces with wheat were bepflanzt, which were climatically suitable for it. The harvest failures caused thereby intensified the anyway bad food situation of the Russian population clearly, it came to hunger emergencies.

The biological sciences of the Soviet Union were lastingly damaged, so that the term Lyssenkoismus should be used from now on as key word for the subordination of scientific realization under the desire conceptions of the policy.

Biografie

Lyssenko originated from a rural family in Karliwka in the Ukraine. it was graduated to 1925 at agricultural Institut of the University of Kiew as Agronom.

it went to 1929 to the institute for All-Union for genetics and Saatzucht into Odessa, which it led from 1934 to 1939. Starting from 1940 it led Institut for genetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. As faithful party men promised it to breed productive sorts and solve all nourishing problems. 1936 it was distinguished by Josef Stalin with the Lenin medal, which it received later still six times. Up to death Stalins 1953 was unbroken its influence in a party and science.

1948 it organized the notorious August meeting of the academy for agrarian sciences. One period of forced obedience in relation to generic term cures and primitive dogmas within all fields of biology began.

In March 1953 he by Nikita Khrushchev was personally criticized. In the middle of April 1956 it became as a president of the Lenin academy for agricultural research by P.P. Lobanow replaced, remained however a agricultural advisor of Khrushchev.

1962 was revealed its scientific errors and falsifications as well as its politics of the political Ausgrenzung of scientific critics by prominent scientists, under it Jakow Seldowitsch, Witali Ginsburg and Pjotr Kapiza. Lysenko became thereupon from Khrushchev to dismiss.

See also

• Evolution theory
• Charles Darwin
• Paul Kammerer
• Gregor Mendel
• Iwan Wladimirowitsch Mitschurin

Literature

• Shores A. Medwedjew: The case Lyssenko. A science capitulates. Hamburg, 1971 (original: The Rise and case OF T.D.Lysenko. New York/London 1969) very good introduction to all aspects of the "“case"” Lyssenko
• Nile roll Hansen: The Lysenko Effect: The Politics OF Science. Humanity Books, 2005.

Related links

• Helmut Some remarks on science-political aspects of genetic research of the fifties in the GDR in connection with the Lyssenko problem (Lomonosov, 3/1999)
• Uwe Hossfeld: In the area of conflict of "“German biology"”, Lyssenkoismus and evolution-ideological Axolotl research (Lomonosov, 3/1999)
• Helena Sheehan: Who which What which (Excerpt from Helena Sheehans book Marxism and the Philosophy OF Science: A Critical History, Humanities press international 1985/1993)
• Robert Todd Carroll:

Articles in category "Trofim Denissowitsch Lyssenko"

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