Premium
Science and politics
Author(s) -
Liu Yongsheng,
Li Baoyin,
Wang Qinglian
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
embo reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.584
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1469-3178
pISSN - 1469-221X
DOI - 10.1038/embor.2009.198
Subject(s) - china , politics , library science , chinese academy of sciences , political science , law , computer science
In his 1977 obituary of Trofim Lysenko (1898–1976), the British biologist Cyril Darlington (1903–1981) commented that Lysenko was “obviously ill‐educated, quite shallow, very cunning and a little deranged” (Darlington, 1977). Lysenko's rejection of Mendelian genetics in favour of Lamarckism, his embrace of the hybridization theories of Russian horticulturist Ivan Michurin (1855–1935), and his claims that plants can be heritably altered by graft hybridization or environmental conditions certainly ran counter to mainstream biological research. His influence and thirst for power had an impact on many areas of Soviet science and politics. The Soviet government imposed a complete ban on the practice and teaching of Mendelian genetics. Russian biological science, which had previously flourished, rapidly declined (Soyfer, 2001).Lysenko was born into a peasant family in the Ukraine and achieved acclaim working as a plant biologist in the late 1920s. His pioneering work on vernalization and his claim that pre‐treating seeds in such a way that the treatment's effects were …