Nikolay Timofeev-Resovsky Timofeev-Resovskiy Nikolay Vladimirovich

(1900-1981), biologist, geneticist, doctor of biological sciences (1964). One of the founders of population and radiation genetics. Research in evolutionary genetics, phenogenetics, radioecology. In 1925 he was sent by the Council of People's Commissars to work in Germany, where he headed a department at the Institute of the Brain. In 1937 he refused to return to the USSR. In 1946-54 he was convicted as a defector. In 1992 he was rehabilitated. From 1955 he worked at the Institute of Biology of the Ural Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Sverdlovsk), and then (1964-69) at the Institute of Medical Radiobiology of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (Obninsk). The scientific and educational activities of Timofeev-Ressovsky played an important role in the revival of genetics in the USSR. The hero of the novel "Bison" by D. A. Granin.

TIMOFEV-RESOVSKY Nikolai Vladimirovich (1900-81), Russian biologist, geneticist, one of the founders of population and radiation genetics. In line with the ideas of V.I. Vernadsky and V.N.Sukachev, he developed biosphere-ecological problems. Research Timofeev-Resovsky 30s. gave impetus to the formation of molecular biology. In the late 1950s and 1970s. scientific and educational activities of Timofeev-Resovsky played a large role in the revival of genetics in the USSR. In 1925 he was sent by the Council of People's Commissars to work in Germany, where he headed a department at the Institute of the Brain. In 1937 he refused to return to the USSR. In 1946-54 he was convicted as a defector. In 1992 he was rehabilitated. The hero of the novel "Bison" by D. A. Granin.
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TIMOFEV-RESOVSKY Nikolai Vladimirovich (September 7, 1900, Moscow - March 28, 1981, Obninsk, Kaluga region), Russian biologist, naturalist and geneticist; one of the founders of radiation genetics (cm. RADIATION GENETICS), the doctrine of microevolution (cm. MICROEVOLUTION), phenogenetics (cm. PHENOGENETICS), biophysicists (cm. BIOPHYSICS); founder of radiation biogeocenology. He played an outstanding role in the preservation and restoration of the scientific tradition in Russia.
A family. Years of study
Born into a noble family. His father, Vladimir Viktorovich, a graduate of two educational institutions at once: the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University and the St. Petersburg Institute of Railway Engineers, was a major railway engineer. Mother, Nadezhda Nikolaevna, from the old aristocratic family of the Vsevolozhskys.
The childhood of the future scientist was spent in Kiev and Moscow, and in the summer months - in the family estate of the Vsevolozhskys in the Kaluga province. It was there that his love for nature manifested itself. The early years fell on the heyday of Russian gymnasiums: Timofeev-Resovsky studied at the best of them - the Imperial Alexandrovskaya 1st gymnasium in Kiev (where his father at that time was building the Odessa-Bakhmach railway) and in the Moscow gymnasium of A.E. Flerov ( after the death of his father in 1914, the family moved to Moscow). Both gymnasiums became famous for their graduates: Kiev - M.A.Bulgakov (cm. BULGAKOV Mikhail Afanasevich), A. N. Vertinsky (cm. VERTINSKY Alexander Nikolaevich), S. M. Lifarem (cm. LIFAR Serge), N. N. Ge (cm. GE Nikolay Nikolaevich), K. G. Paustovsky (cm. PAUSTOVSKY Konstantin Georgievich), F. G. Dobrzhansky (cm. DOBRZHANSKY Feodosiy Grigorievich), L.A. Zenkevich (cm. ZENKEVICH Lev Alexandrovich), E. V. Tarle (cm. TARLE Evgeny Viktorovich), I. I. Sikorsky (cm. SIKORSKY Igor Ivanovich), A. V. Lunacharsky (cm. LUNACHARSKY Anatoly Vasilievich); Moscow - D. V. Obruchev, A. A. Reformatsky (cm. REFORMATSKY Alexander Alexandrovich), B. L. Astaurov (cm. ASTAUROV Boris Lvovich), V.N. Lazarev (cm. LAZAREV Victor Nikitich), I. V. Ilyinsky (cm. Ilyinsky Igor Vladimirovich)and others. Already in his youth he amazed by the breadth of interests. During his gymnasium years he took part in the work of numerous circles, not only natural science, but also on culture and art (he was an indispensable participant in theatrical performances). Collected birds for the Zoological Museum, listened to lectures at the People's University. Shanyavsky (cm. SHANYAVSKY UNIVERSITY), participated in the dining of Patriarch Tikhon (cm. TIKHON) in the Kremlin Chambers in 1917, was fond of sports (he was especially successful at running).
In 1917 he entered the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University, where at that time a galaxy of remarkable scientists taught (zoologists M.A.Menzbir (cm. MENZBIR Mikhail Alexandrovich), A. N. Severtsov (cm. SEVERTSOV Alexey Nikolaevich), B. S. Matveev (cm. MATVEEV Boris Stepanovich), G. A. Kozhevnikov, geologist A. P. Pavlov (cm. PAVLOV Alexey Petrovich), paleontologist M.V. Pavlova (cm. PAVLOVA Maria Vasilievna)). But his main teachers were N.K.Koltsov (cm. Koltsov Nikolai Konstantinovich), who proposed the matrix principle of reproduction of "molecules of heredity", and S. S. Chetverikov (cm. CHETVERIKOV Sergey Sergeevich)combining modern genetics (cm. GENETICS)and Darwinism (cm. DARWINISM)... He graduated from the course in 1922, but did not receive a diploma - the education reform began.
Post-war time. Working with Koltsov
In the same 1917 he ended up on the German front, when the Civil War began - on the Denikin front, fighting in the cavalry of the 12th Red Army. After suffering typhus, he returned to Moscow, where he passed Koltsov's Great Zoological Workshop (summer semesters - at the Zvenigorod hydrobiological station of S.N. Skadovsky (cm. SKADOVSKY Sergey Nikolaevich)), courses of biometrics and genetics Chetverikov. He was engaged in freshwater fish of Central Russian lakes and intended to study their geographic variability. He worked as a loader. At the same time he taught zoology at the Prechistensk workers' faculty and at the Practical Institute. In 1921 he became a researcher at the Koltsov Institute of Experimental Biology (IEB), where he worked until leaving for Germany (1925), although he was enrolled in the Institute until 1930.
The beginning of experimental population genetics
In the fall of 1921, Koltsov instructed Timofeev-Ressovsky and his friend D. D. Romashov to obtain mutations in Drosophila (cm. Drosophils)X-rays. After the arrival of G. Meller (cm. MELLER Herman Joseph)to Koltsov in August 1922 (he brought Drosophila lines from T. Morgan's laboratory (cm. MORGAN Thomas Hunt)) Chetverikov's group organized a circle "Soor" (from "joint shouting") to discuss literature on Drosophila genetics, evolution, and cytology. This group later made up the color of the IEB. B. L. Astaurov, E. I. Balkashina, N. K. Belyaev, S. M. Gershenzon worked in the Genetic Department (cm. GERSHENZON Sergey Mikhailovich), A. N. Promptov, P. F. Rokitsky, E. A. and N. V. Timofeevy-Resovskiy, S. R. Tsarapkin. This group conducted the first study of mutations in wild populations, which gave rise to experimental population genetics. All scientific interests of Timofeev-Ressovsky were formed during this period.
Marriage. Departure to Germany
In 1922 Timofeev-Ressovsky married Elena Alexandrovna Fidler. Her parents were the founders of the famous Fiedler Gymnasium, relatives are the owners of Ferrein's pharmacy; through the Vogts, the Moscow Fiedlers were related to I. Kant (cm. KANT Immanuel)... A graduate of the Alferov gymnasium, a student of Koltsov and Chetverikov, Elena Alexandrovna worked with her husband for half a century.
In January 1925 O. Vogt (cm. FOGT Oscar) opened in Moscow a branch of the Berlin Institute of the Brain (to study the brain of V.I. Lenin). He collected a collection of bumblebees to study their variability. Having become acquainted with the work of the IEB geneticists, he decided to organize genetic research at the Berlin Institute and asked Koltsov and Chetverikov to recommend him one of the students. In May 1925 Timofeev-Ressovsky with his wife and little son Dmitry ("Foma") left for Berlin.
In Germany
While working in Germany in 1925-1945 (in 1925-29 - a researcher; in 1929-36 head of the Department of Genetics at the Institute of the Brain of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, in 1937-45 head of the independent Department of Genetics of the OKW) Timofeev-Resovsky consistently realized the potential accumulated in previous years. He was engaged in the development and classification of phenomena of phenogenetics, population genetics, microevolution, zoogeography, radiation genetics, biophysics. While not placing too high on particular theories, he gave preference to general principles (the authorship of which is easily lost, and they become something self-evident); obtaining valuable experimental data, he formalized general principles and published fundamental works in these areas.
In the 1920s. Berlin was one of the centers of Russian culture, since it was in the capital of Germany that a significant part of the Russian emigration settled. The Timofeevs-Resovskys communicated with famous artists (V.A.Vatagin (cm. VATAGIN Vasily Alekseevich), L.O. Pasternak (cm. PASTERNAK Leonid Osipovich), O. A. Tsinger), musicians (the leader of the Don Cossack choir S. Zharov, V. Topilin and others), with a prominent philanthropist S. I. Mamontov (cm. MAMONTOV Savva Ivanovich), with religious philosophers expelled from Russia (S.L. Frank (cm. FRANK Semyon Ludvigovich), N. A. Berdyaev (cm. BERDYAEV Nikolay Alexandrovich)), with philologist N. S. Trubetskoy (cm. TRUBETSKOY Nikolay Sergeevich) and etc.
In the spring of 1927 Timofeev-Resovsky met in Berlin with Koltsov and V.I. Vernadsky (cm. VERNADSKY Vladimir Ivanovich)during the Week of Russian Science, in the fall - with Chetverikov and N.I. Vavilov (cm. VAVILOV Nikolay Ivanovich) at the V Congress on Genetics. In January 1929, the Timofeevs-Resovskys participated in absentia at the Congress on Genetics in Leningrad, since Koltsov managed to convince them not to come because of the outbreak of attacks on the IEB and the arrest of Chetverikov. After 1930 Timofeev-Resovsky was dismissed from the IEB, and his works were no longer published in his homeland. In 1933, at the end of the business trip, Koltsov directly contributed to the fact that his student did not return, but the business trip was extended until 1937, and the correspondence and exchange of prints of works continued until 1941.
In a series of works 1925-34 and a summary of 1940 on the phenotypic realization of the gene, Timofeev-Ressovsky described the coordinate system for the realization of genes; formulated the concept of a hereditary constitution; put forward the idea of \u200b\u200bidiosomatic groups of variability; developed a general scheme of gene manifestation, which stabilized the concept of gene interaction. The very first work of the Timofeev-Resovskys on experimental population genetics (1927) proved the presence of lethal (deadly genes) in a thriving wild population of fruit flies (cm. Drosophils) (the so-called genetic load) and at the same time raised the question of their significance for the fitness of populations.
Timofeev-Resovskii investigated the comparative viability and areas of activity of various species of Drosophila; adaptive polymorphism of adalia (two-point ladybirds). In 1926-45, he and his colleagues conducted a monographic study of the genogeography of the epilyakhna (potato ladybug). In 1936-43 he developed the concept of the elementary material, structure and factors of the process of microevolution (his term) and the relationship between micro- and macroevolution; formulated (based on the material of radio mutations) the principle of the amplifier in biology, covering the role of discreteness in living nature, including the selection effect.
Founder of Radiation Genetics
In his 1929 work on the induction of mutations in Drosophila by means of X-rays, Timofeev-Resovskii was the first to receive reverse mutations (an important addition to the work of Möller, 1927). A report on this topic was presented at the plenary session of the VI Congress of Genetics in the USA in 1932 (during which Vavilov advised Timofeev-Resovsky not to return to the USSR). More than 80 publications on mutagenesis (cm. MUTAGENESIS)devoted to the elucidation of the quantitative laws of the formation of point mutations in Drosophila under the influence of radiation (dependence on the dose, on its distribution in time, on the type of radiation, etc.), were published in the period 1925-45. Timofeev-Ressovsky, together with Meller, is considered the founder of radiation genetics (Timofeev-Ressovsky's term). It was Timofeev-Resovsky in the early 1930s. first proposed the use of lead aprons to protect radiologists. Thanks to his knowledge of the biological effects of radiation, he was the first, long before the atomic explosion over Hiroshima, to urge the scientific community to develop ways to protect the population from radiation.
It is important to note that Timofeev-Resovsky was the first to draw attention to the long-term effects of radiation, while in the 1930s, and later, other biologists and doctors (including at the American hospital in Hiroshima) were interested exclusively in the direct effect of radiation. It is significant that A.D.Sakharov (cm. SAKHAROV Andrey Dmitrievich) turned to the problems of protecting the biosphere and humanity and advocated the prohibition of atomic weapons tests in response to one of Timofeev-Resovsky's lectures he heard.
Hit principle and target principle
Continuing the Russian tradition of circles, Timofeev-Resovsky organized a biophysical seminar to develop Koltsov's ideas on the matrix principle using modern research tools (and supplemented it with the principle of convariant reduplication, which takes into account mutations). One of the results of the collaboration with physicists was the joint work with K. Zimmer and M. Delbrück (cm. DELBRUK Max)"On the nature of gene mutations and gene structure" 1935), known as "the work of three men" and "TZD", where (in the development of the ideas of Koltsov, F. Dessauer and others) the principle of hitting and the principle of target were formulated. It turned out that X-ray-induced mutations are dependent on changes in one or a few molecules (and an estimate of the size of the gene is given). This became a sensation that pushed the German scientists B. Raevsky and N. Riehl to create the German Biophysical Society. For the first time, the stability of the "gene molecule" was deduced from quantum mechanical considerations, this thought "TZD" in the presentation of E. Schrödinger (cm. Schrödinger Erwin) ("What is life", 1944; "What is life from the point of view of physics?", 1947) contributed to the involvement of a number of physicists in the postwar years to study the problems of future molecular biology.
Late 1930s - early 1940s
Timofeev-Resovsky participated in seminars by Niels Bohr (cm. Bor Niels); Together with B. S. Ephrussi, he organized colloquia of biologists and physicists (financial support was provided by the Rockefeller Foundation). Geneticists and crystallographers (who later made a decisive contribution to the discovery of the structure of the "double helix") for the first time jointly discussed the chemical nature of the chromosome and gene at the colloquia in Klampenborg in April 1938.
In 1937 Timofeev-Ressovsky rejected the offer of the Rockefeller Foundation to head the laboratory at the Carnegie Institute, since in this case the road to his homeland was ordered to him. At the beginning of 1937, Koltsov twice warned him against returning to the USSR (by a letter through Swedish diplomats and through Meller, who had left the USSR for Spain). In May 1937, the Timofeevs-Resovskys became defectors without citizenship.
Since 1937, the Department of Genetics in Berlin was directly subordinate to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Promotion of Sciences. Timofeev-Ressovsky also received support from the OKW nongovernmental academy, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Auer concern (the scientific director of the concern N. Ril provided him with a powerful fast neutron generator for genetic experiments). Timofeev-Ressovsky possessed indisputable authority, he aroused respect from various circles (even scientists, Hitler's admirers, often stood up to his defense). “The German employees of the Institute look at this strange and temperamental Russian with affection and sincere admiration. They even give him such freedom of speech and opinion that no other person would have allowed, ”recalled an American geneticist who visited Berlin in the winter of 1939.
In the spring of 1943, the eldest son of the Timofeevs-Resovskys was arrested for anti-Nazi activities; he was held for a long time in a Berlin prison after the end of the investigation. Timofeev-Resovsky, refusing to accept German citizenship, sharply rejected the offer to head the program of sterilization of the Slavs with radiation in exchange for the life of his son, who was immediately sent to the Mauthausen camp. (cm. MAUTHAUSEN) where he died tragically on May 1, 1945.
Arrest. Karlager. Sungul
In April 1945 the Soviet Army entered Berlin; Timofeev-Resovsky was appointed by the Soviet military administration as director of the Institute of Genetics and Biophysics (later the Medical and Biological Institute, headed by Elena Aleksandrovna). By this time, the publication of the first volume of the three-volume work "The Principle of Hit in Biology" (1947, with Zimmer).
In September 1945 Timofeev-Ressovsky was arrested and sent to Moscow, where he was presented with the standard charge of espionage. During the investigation, he behaved in the highest degree with dignity. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 5 years of disqualification. He was serving his sentence in the famous Karlag (Karaganda forced labor camp), where he fell ill with pellagra, lost his central vision and was close to death. But after in 1946 the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs A.P. Zavenyagin (cm. ZAVENYAGIN Avraamy Pavlovich) attracted specialists from among the prisoners to speed up work on the study of the products of atomic decay, among whom was Timofeev-Ressovsky, who became the head (1947-1955) of the Biophysical Department of Laboratory "B" in Sungul in the Urals, where his wife and his youngest son also moved Andrey (b. 1927, Berlin), as well as some of his Berlin colleagues.
After release
After his release in 1955, Timofeev-Resovsky faced a new reality, which he did not know either in Lenin's Russia, or in Weimar and Hitler's Germany, or in a regime enterprise: a monstrous bureaucracy, disregard of rational methods of management, hardships of life, a low level of culture of those with whom I had a chance to communicate (especially middle managers), obedient mediocrity and unprincipled careerists. A world famous, he could not get a job in any of the capitals; foreign friends and colleagues were not allowed to see him; he himself was, of course, restricted to travel abroad. But the indomitable strength of the spirit allowed him to maintain dignity and greatness.
Organization of the Laboratory of Biophysics in Sverdlovsk
After 1945, he did not even have the opportunity to follow the development of molecular biology, but did not feel discomfort: having set milestones for future researchers in one area, he shifted his attention to another, at that moment more important. In 1955 Timofeev-Resovsky organized the Laboratory of Biophysics in Sverdlovsk with a biological station on the Bolshoye Miassovoye Lake in the Ilmensky Reserve. Studying since the 1930s. accumulation of a number of elements by various organisms by the method of labeled atoms and based on the ideas of Vernadsky and V.N.Sukachev (cm. SUKACHEV Vladimir Nikolaevich), he now set the task of an early and complete study of all issues related to the possible impacts of the nuclear industry on humans and the biosphere. To restore scientific continuity, Timofeev-Ressovsky from 1956 conducted summer schools at Miassovo with lectures on genetics, cybernetics, the theory of evolution, little-known radiobiology and the doctrine of the biosphere, forbidden at that time. He published new versions of works written in the 1920s-1940s. A brilliant lecturer, he lectured wherever the opportunity presented itself. He possessed the gift of knowing the most important thing about every thing, and not a lot of tedious details; his influence on three or even four scientific generations cannot be overestimated.
When in September 1957 near Kyshtym, not far from Miassovo, a radioactive waste reservoir ("small Ural Chernobyl") exploded, Timofeev-Resovsky proposed using the "spit", a giant contaminated zone, as a testing ground for comprehensive studies of the consequences of radioactive contamination, as he had already used limited areas of permanent discharge of radioactive waste. (During work in Sungul and Miassovo, he himself, his wife and son received a serious dose of radiation). He drew up a project for open and comprehensive research in this area, the project received support, but by 1959 only a number of classified projects were accepted for development, the flawedness of which became obvious during the elimination of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident in 1986.
Work in Obninsk
At the beginning of 1963 Timofeev-Ressovsky successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic "Some problems of radiation biogeocenology", which was approved by the Higher Attestation Commission only after the "Lysenkovism" was officially exposed, in October 1964. Nevertheless, his laboratory was split and disbanded ... But the scientist did not give up. In 1964 he organized the Department of General Radiobiology and Radiation Genetics at the Institute of Medical Radiology in Obninsk, where the country's first nuclear power plant was located. He began to publish updated versions of his monographs of the 1930-1940s, linking the interrupted scientific tradition. Summarizing his research, he identified four levels of organization of living things with their elementary structures and phenomena: molecular genetic, ontogenetic, population-specific and biosphere-biogeocenotic. Taking the question of the origin of life outside the framework of science, he adhered to the view of the eternity of life.
Titanic personality
The titanic personality of Timofeev-Resovsky, who has self-sufficiency and feels free in a non-free world, has always been a foreign body for the party nomenclature. The scientist was not afraid to openly compare the free life of the 1920s. and the restrictive existence of the 1960s, spoke out about the Hungarian events of 1956 (cm. HUNGARIAN EVENTS 1956), Prague Spring. (cm. PRAGUE SPRING)
In addition to his scientific activities, Timofeev-Ressovsky, working in Obninsk, was actively involved in the education of youth. A circle of young people gathered around him with reports on music. The official authorities did not like this. The new party leadership of Obninsk in the summer of 1969 sent Timofeev-Resovsky to retire, after which Elena Aleksandrovna, who had worked with him for 47 years, left the institute. At the beginning of 1970, an American scientist, Nobel laureate and student of Timofeev-Resovsky M. Delbrück visited Moscow (cm. DELBRUK Max), who did a lot to finally appreciate Timofeev-Resovsky's contribution to science at its true worth in his homeland. Timofeev-Resovsky was admitted to the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems, where he investigated the problems of space biology: on corrections for the damaging effect of ionizing radiation in space flight; about the principles of closed ecosystems and the measure of reliability; about the combined effect of magnetic fields, radiation, weightlessness, light rhythms on a person during a long flight.
Timofeev-Ressovsky was elected a scientific member of the Society for the Promotion of Sciences of Kaiser Wilhelm (now Max Planck (cm. PLANK Max)), an honorary member of the Italian Society of Experimental Biology, a member of the German Academy of Naturalists Leopoldina (cm. LEOPOLDINA) , an honorary foreign member of the Mendeleev Society in Lund, the British Genetic Society in Leeds, the National Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston. In the 1960s. he was nominated for a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, but his candidacy was not admitted to the elections. He was awarded the Lazzaro Spallanzani Medal (1940), the Darwin Plaque of the Leopoldin Academy (1959), the Mendeleev Medal (1965), the Kimber Prize and the Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to the Genetics of the US National Academy of Sciences (1966), the Gregor Mendel Medal of the Leopoldine Academy (1970).
Elena Alexandrovna died in 1973, Nikolai Vladimirovich survived her by eight years. In 1986, the novel "Berlin Wild" by Ellie Welt (wife of Peter Welt, who was saved in the war) was published; 1987 - the story "Bison" by D. Granin (

See what "Nikolay Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky" is in other dictionaries:

- (1900 8..1) Russian biologist, geneticist, one of the founders of population and radiation genetics. In line with the ideas of V. I. Vernadsky and V. N. Sukachev, he developed biosphere-ecological problems. Research Timofeev Resovsky 30s. gave ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

- [R. 7 (20) .9.1900, Moscow], Soviet biologist, In 1925 he graduated from Moscow State University. Pupil of S. S. Chetverikov and N. K. Koltsov. In 1922 he was 25 employees of the Institute of Experimental Biology. In 1925, 45 worked in Germany. Upon his return to the USSR, he headed the departments of the institute ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Nikolay Timofeev-Resovsky - (1900 81), biologist, geneticist, one of the founders of population and radiation genetics. In line with the ideas of V.I. Vernadsky and V.N. Sukacheva developed biosphere-ecological problems. Research Timofeev Resovsky 30s. gave impetus ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

Nikolay Vladimirovich Timofeev Resovsky Date of birth: September 7 (20) 1900 (1900 09 20) Place of birth: Moscow, Russian Empire Date of death: March 28, 1981 ... Wikipedia

Timofeev-Resovsky, Nikolay Vladimirovich - (06 (19). 09.1900, Moscow 03/28/1981, Obninsk) biologist, Dr. Biol. sciences. (1965). Honorary Member American Acad. Sciences and Lawsuit in (1973). Action member German Acad. natural science (GDR) Leopoldin (1969) and others. in a noble family. Graduated ... ... Ural Historical Encyclopedia - ... Wikipedia

Timofeev Resovsky, Nikolai Vladimirovich Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev Resovsky Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev Resovsky. Portrait painted by Oleg Tsinger (1945). Date of birth: September 20 ... Wikipedia

Nikolai Vladimirovich (1900 81), biologist, geneticist, one of the founders of population and radiation genetics. In line with the ideas of V.I. Vernadsky and V.N. Sukacheva developed biosphere-ecological problems. Research Timofeev Resovsky 30 x ... ... Modern encyclopedia

In the mid-1930s, a theory was formulated describing the kinetic dependences of neither the activating and mutagenic effect of ionizing radiation - the so-called "target theory". The most important experiments that became the basis of this theory were carried out in the period 1931-1937. several researchers, among whom was Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky, who became one of the founders of the quantitative biophysics of ionizing radiation.

Timofeev-Ressovsky developed the ideas of N. Koltsov, who assumed that molecular hereditary structures are formed through matrix synthesis. He conducted research on the biophysical analysis of the mutational process, which subsequently led to the formation of molecular biology as a new synthetic discipline. Timofeev-Resovsky showed that mutational changes affect a relatively limited group of atoms in the chromosome. This discovery brought the mutational process to the molecular level of understanding for the first time.

Nikolai Vladimirovich is also considered one of the founders of radiobiology. He was able to establish how the radiation dose affects the intensity of the mutation process. He discovered the phenomenon of low-dose radio stimulation and analyzed the primary triggers for mutations under the influence of radiation.

This researcher was the first to point out that in addition to the direct consequences of exposure to ionizing radiation (i.e., malignant neoplasms, burns, radiation sickness), there is a serious risk of harmful mutations occurring and their accumulation in populations.

One of the most important components of the quantitative theory of the mutational process was the research of the Russian scientist on the probabilities of the occurrence of direct and reverse mutations.

In 1934, Timofeev-Ressovsky conducted a series of brilliant experiments that showed for the first time that the combination of several recessive mutations, each of which separately reduces the viability, can lead to an increase in the viability of individuals carrying these combinations. These studies made it possible to fully understand the evolutionary significance of the phenomena of recessiveness and dominance.

Together with M. Delbrück (later Nobel Prize winner) Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky carried out work on modeling the structure of genes. In the same period, in collaboration with the physicist R. Rompe, he discovered and described the "amplifier principle" in biology, which became one of the most important general principles of modern theoretical biology. According to this principle, a single change is capable of changing the properties of a whole individual and triggering forces that are several orders of magnitude greater in terms of energy expended.

The twenties were followed by the notorious 30s, when not only people, but also some areas of science were subjected to repression. Genetics was considered the most provocative and ideologically unstable then. And cybernetics is paired with her. What kind of sciences are these whose laws do not obey the orders of the party? However, what scientists are, such is science, the fathers of the nation reasoned and undertook to re-educate the obstinate know-it-alls. What are they worth without their laboratories, for example? But more often they resorted to more reliable methods of influence: exile, hard labor. And, as the most reliable - execution.

Many were scattered then by fate. But there is an amazing example of when knowledge really turned out to be a force that turned out to be too tough even for such monsters of that time as Stalin and Hitler. In 2010, this incredible person would have turned 110 years old. Compatriots first learned about him from the novel by Daniil Granin, written immediately after the start of perestroika. The title of the novel accurately characterizes the personality of the hero. The novel is called "Bison", the name of the hero is Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky. He entered the history of science as one of the founders of such areas as molecular biology, radiation genetics, radiobiology. He was an extraordinary personality, titanic, bright and free! No iron "curtains" existed for him and could not exist.

When the novel was published, and thousands and thousands of people learned about Timofeev-Ressovsky, many thought that the hero of the novel was a collective image. Although, of course, this was not at all the case.

Legends were made about Timofeev-Resovsky. In 1925, as one of the world's leading geneticists, he was invited to Germany to "move science" together with his German colleagues. Meanwhile, "dark days" began in Russia: two brothers of Nikolai also became victims of repression.

Vladimirovich, who were shot. Realizing that he was facing the same fate, he preferred science to death. And - stayed in Germany.

During the war years, up to 1945, the scientist continued his scientific research, remaining a citizen of the USSR, which he publicly liked to remind others about. They say that when Berlin turned to dust under the rain of Soviet bombs, Timofeev-Resovsky went out to this very "rain" and bellowed Russian songs. And no one dared to stop him. They also say that not only the house where this frantic Russian lived, but also the institute where he worked, the bombs flew around as if they had been charmed.

It was in 1945, immediately after the war, that Timofeev-Resovsky decided to return to Russia, although it was clearer what a tasty prey he would be for the "authorities".

The Soviet rulers solved the problem of selection in a fundamentally different way than the Germans: they filled the gas chambers, in their opinion, with inferior human material so as not to spoil the offspring. Our genetics from the authorities destroyed the best.

It is clear that in the homeland of the scientist, the wide-open gates of Butyrka were waiting, where he arrived in what he was.

Having not lived in Russia for a long time, Timofeev-Resovsky did not even know how to behave during interrogation, and tried to wrap him up

as a joke. From the outside, his conversation with the investigator was more like an interview of a certain gentleman with an annoying journalist. He thrust a piece of paper with the gentleman and demanded an "autograph", which in the context of this conversation would mean that the "interviewee" was an English spy. Timofeev-Ressovsky was not a spy. However, having entered the position of an investigator, he graciously agreed to a compromise: he would sign his autograph in exchange for being recognized as a Chilean spy. He does not care what people say about him after his death.

In order not to waste time in prison, Timofeev-Resovsky proposed to create an institute right there.

But the real work unfolded in a laboratory hidden in the Ilmensky nature reserve in the Urals. Soon information about who runs this secret laboratory was leaked to the people, and walkers reached out to the involuntary hermit. To get to the teacher, they had to cross a mountain pass on foot. Only at the Timofeev-Ressovsky station, and nowhere else, could you hear lectures on genetics and the theory of microevolution.

in science. In his laboratory "on chicken legs", he dealt with the issue of decontamination of water and soil. Thirty years later, it was these developments of his that were used to clean soil and water in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Chernobyl accident.

When in the 50s there was a huge leak of radioactive waste at one of the enterprises near Chelyabinsk, Timofeev-Resovsky proposed to organize a radiological center in this region to study the problems of radioactive contamination. And (how unpatriotic!) - to make this radioactive reserve accessible for study by specialists from all over the world. Well, the academician of the six world academies did not understand that radiation has specific features for this region: it is "limited" by political principles.

Bogdanov, Doctor of Biological Sciences, who knew Timofeev-Ressovsky well, who happened to work at the famous Ural biological station of the scientist, says that Timofeev-Ressovsky was unique precisely because he was not only a great scientist. At the distant Ural station, he told young talents not only about genetics, but also lectured about Levitan, the impressionists, music and the Itinerants. Real science is the privilege of only people who are very healthy in spirit and body, he would

l am convinced of this.

It was his colossal erudition that allowed him, long before any apparent reason, to talk about environmental problems associated with human economic activity. Whether mankind wants it or not, the scientist said, it will have to deal with the problems of the biosphere associated with the need for a general increase in the biological productivity of the earth.

It is customary to think that science explains something, and that science is knowledge, - he told his students. “But science and knowledge are different things. In the history of mankind there have been many truly great scientists who argued that science does not give any real knowledge. It only helps to systematize our information about the world,

Timofeev-Resovsky died in 1981. Unforgiven. Unrehabilitated. That's how it is, genetics in the Soviet way.

Deciphering the genetic code of a human chromosome can lead to unpredictable results. Unpredictability is in the people who will get this knowledge. Just think - to read the genome of a single person is said to take 100 years! Who knows what all this "complex" and "complex" audience is capable of? Now, if only the genes of Timofeev-Resovsky were "connected" to the genes of Ivan Ivanovich ..

Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky was born in Moscow on September 7, 1899 in the family of a railway engineer Vladimir Viktorovich Timofeev-Resovsky and his wife Nadezhda Nikolaevna, nee Vsevolozhskaya. (Almost all sources indicate the erroneous year of birth of the scientist - 1900.) The life of the family was associated with frequent travels due to the specifics of the father's service. At the age of 11, Nikolai entered the 1st Kiev Alexander Gymnasium, and three years later he transferred to the private Moscow Flerov gymnasium. While still a schoolboy, he made several trips to different regions of Russia - to Karelia, Western Siberia, the Dnieper region, during which he collected zoological collections for gymnasium museums.

In 1918, Nikolai was drafted into the Red Army, so he never received a full higher education, although he studied at the Moscow University of Shanyavsky, and then studied at the natural department of physics and mathematics at the 1st Moscow State University. The scientist himself recalled this time like this: “I either fought, then ended up in Moscow and immediately sat down at the Zoological Museum for my formalin and alcohol fish. And I earned money mainly as a loader ... I was interrupted all the time, because again I got to the front. I could have avoided all this: fronts and so on, but my whole life I had a feeling of awkwardness to find myself in some more or less exceptional conditions. If everyone is at war, we must fight. If everyone is starving, you need to starve. "

In 1920, Nikolai began teaching biology at the Prechistensk workers' faculty, and a year later he got a job as a research assistant at the Institute of Experimental Biology, which was included in the structure of the State Scientific Institute under the People's Commissariat for Land. The young scientist very quickly showed himself in the field of studying population genetics.

In the 1920s, there was a close relationship between scientists from the USSR and Germany. The famous German neuropathologist Oskar Vogt visited the Soviet Union more than once, taking part in the treatment of Lenin, and after his death advised the founders of the Soviet Brain Institute. During his next visit, he asked to advise him of a young promising scientist to work at the Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Vogt opened a separate laboratory at this institute to study the variability of bumblebees, but Germany did not have the necessary specialists in this field. The choice fell on Timofeev-Ressovsky, who was fluent in German and French. Together with his wife Elena Alexandrovna and son Dmitry, in 1925 he left for Berlin, not realizing that the scientific trip would eventually become emigration ...

The scientist's place of work was located in the suburb of the German capital - Buch. The German period in scientific activity became very fruitful. Timofeev-Resovsky discovered and substantiated the fundamental principles in modern developmental genetics and population genetics - the principles of penetrance and expressiveness, together with the future Nobel Prize winner Max Delbrück he developed a model of the gene structure.

In January 1933, the Nazis came to power in Germany. But this practically did not affect the work of the institute in Buch: “We very little noticed everything that was happening in Germany. Wilhelm II - so Wilhelm II, Hitler - so Hitler, Hindenburg - so Hindenburg. All Germans. What is it to us? We are foreigners, all this did not concern us as it did the Germans. " In the spring of 1937, the USSR embassy in Germany unexpectedly refused to renew foreign passports for the scientist and his wife. It was necessary to return to Moscow. But by that time Timofeev-Ressovsky already knew about the fate of his two brothers - both were arrested. And the colleagues who lived in the USSR directly warned the scientist against returning to his homeland. Nevertheless, Timofeev-Resovsky did not refuse such an opportunity - he simply delayed the moment of his return. “And then the war began, it was no longer possible to return, even with a full desire,” he recalled. - Remained as an enemy alien there. I was not particularly worried. I had already lived in Bukh for so long, everyone knew me, the police knew me too. When it became known that foreigners who live in Germany must appear at their police station every week in order to register that they exist, have not gone anywhere, have not run away, I appeared in Buch at the police station a week later. The chief of police, some major or a lieutenant colonel police officer, having heard that it was me, left his office, greeted me, he dragged me into his office, offered me a cup of coffee and said: “You know, Herr Doctor, because you have known us for a long time, You have been living here for a long time, we have known you for a long time. Well, what should you drag to us. I'll put you a bird every week - that's all. " So I didn't appear at the police again. They gave me a bird by the hand of the chief of police himself.

Nevertheless, the scientist did not remain indifferent to the fight against Nazism. He actively helped people who were hiding from the regime's persecution, supplied them with documents, and recruited them to his institute. Nikolai Vladimirovich's eldest son Dmitry was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 for participating in an underground organization. When Timofeev-Resovsky was offered to develop and lead a program for sterilizing the Slavs with radiation in exchange for the life of his son, he sharply rejected this proposal. Dmitry was sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where he founded a new underground group and was shot on May 1, 1945.

In April 1945, when the front came close to Berlin, the scientist was offered to transfer the institute to the west of Germany, to the zone of future American occupation, but Timofeev-Resovskiy resolutely refused. After the liberation of Berlin, the Soviet military administration of the city appointed Nikolai Vladimirovich director of the Institute for Brain Research in Buch. But his work in this position continued for a very short time. Already on September 13, 1945, the scientist was arrested by the NKVD task force and transported to Moscow.

During interrogations, Timofeev-Ressovsky was persistently asked which country he was a spy. In the end, Nikolai Vladimirovich "confessed" that he worked in favor of ... Chile. However, the absurdity of this confession did not bother anyone, and on July 4, 1946, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR sentenced the scientist to 10 years in camps for treason. He served his term in Moscow prisons, where he quickly made himself respect with vivid lectures on biophysics, which he read to inmates, and ... excellent knowledge of oriental martial arts.

In 1947, Timofeev-Ressovsky was remembered as an invaluable specialist in radiation genetics in connection with the development of the Soviet atomic project. He was taken to the hospital of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where he was "patched up", and then sent to the Chelyabinsk region. There, the prisoner was appointed head of the "sharashka" - a closed laboratory codenamed "Object 0211". Working conditions were excellent, his wife came to Nikolai Vladimirovich, but he remained a prisoner nonetheless until 1951. His conviction was removed only after three years.

After his release, Timofeev-Ressovsky headed the biophysics laboratory at the Institute of Biology of the Ural branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. His seminars on general problems of biology and biophysics quickly became popular both among young scientists and among prominent specialists. The biological station Bolshoye Miassovo in the Ilmensky Reserve, where summer seminars were held, has become a real place of pilgrimage among biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and chemists. But despite the highest authority of the scientist, he was able to defend his doctoral dissertation only in 1963, and received his diploma a year later.

Since 1964, Nikolai Vladimirovich worked at the Institute of Medical Radiology of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences in Obninsk, where he headed the Department of General Radiobiology and Genetics. Four years later, on a false denunciation, he was fired from his job. The most painful thing for Timofeev-Ressovsky was that the denunciation was written by his student ...

The last 11 years of his life, Nikolai Vladimirovich worked in Moscow, at the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the USSR Ministry of Health, participated in the development of a program of biological experiments on artificial earth satellites, and trained young cosmobiologists.

On March 28, 1981, at the age of 81, the outstanding scientist died in Obninsk and was buried in the local cemetery. For his scientific work Timofeev-Ressovsky was awarded many prestigious prizes. He was an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Italian Society for Experimental Biology, and the All-Union Society of Geneticists and Breeders. In 1987, Daniil Granin's Bison, based on the biography of NV Timofeev-Resovsky, became an all-Union bestseller. But the scientist was officially rehabilitated only 11 years after his death - in June 1992.

Valery Soifer

Communicating during my student holidays with Professor Sergei Sergeevich Chetverikov in the then city of Gorky, and during school time in Moscow with Academician Igor Evgenievich Tamm, I heard from them the name of Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky (I will continue to write T.-R.). He was a student of Chetverikov in the 1920s and from 1925 he lived in Germany, where he got under non-trivial circumstances. After Lenin's death, someone in the Soviet government decided that he must have a specially arranged genius brain (however, it was soon found that the tissues of Lenin's brain were irreversibly deformed and even reduced as a result of a serious illness). Oskar Vogt, director of two German institutes - Kaiser Wilhelm Brain Research and Neurological Research at the University of Berlin, was invited to the USSR from Germany. As Chetverikov told me, Vogt, having arrived in Moscow at the beginning of 1925, agreed to help organize a comprehensive study of Lenin's brain in the USSR, but for now, without putting matters on the back burner, suggested starting the necessary research in Berlin. According to the staff of the Institute of the Brain in Moscow today, Lenin's brain is still stored in their building in room 19.

Vogt was so inspired by Chetverikov's achievements in genetics that he asked him to recommend one of his students for a temporary move to Berlin in order to raise the level of genetic research in Germany. Chetverikov told me that he announced such a possibility, and his student Kolya T.-R. expressed a desire to go to Germany with his wife Elena Aleksandrovna (née Fiedler), whom her husband called Lelka for decades. Soon, under the patronage of Chetverikov, another of his closest disciples, Sergei Romanovich Tsarapkin, went to Germany. These negotiations and the recommendations of Sergei Sergeevich are also evidenced by his letter to Vogt, sent on June 3, 1926.

According to various recollections, from the mid-1930s T.-R. more than once tried to return to the USSR. But he was sent by diplomatic mail (as T.-R. told me, through the Swedish ambassador) a letter from N.K.Koltsov, in which the teacher warned the student that after his return he would most likely be arrested and possibly executed and that better to stay in Germany. Now there are indications that N.I. Vavilov also transmitted T.-R. similar advice. As a result, T.-R. with his wife and son, just like the Tsarapkins, they lived in Germany until the end of World War II.

T.-R. during his life in the West, he became a famous geneticist, especially in the field of radiation and population genetics, and established friendly relations with many scientists, including Niels Bohr. At first, he simply used radiation as a tool to induce mutations, then he got involved in the study of the damaging effects of radiation. His closest friend Nikolaus Riehl (the son of a German engineer invited by Siemens to work in Russia at the end of the 19th century and married to a Russian woman) studied until 1927, first at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic, and then at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He was an expert in nuclear chemistry, was involved in the German atomic bomb project and often came to the Timofeevs' home, where they communicated on a wide range of scientific and human problems. Thus, let formally T.-R. and was not involved in the German uranium project, but he had a very close acquaintance with this project, especially since his studies of the processes of damage to the hereditary structures of living organisms by various types of radiation were important to nuclear physicists. Working together with T.-R. in Berlin, I.B. Panshin testified that Riel immediately after the war transmitted to the USSR a huge amount of information about German atomic development and was immediately included in the Soviet atomic program (he even received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, twice he was awarded the Stalin Prize and then the Lenin Prize ; after a ten-year stay in the USSR, he repatriated to Germany). Beria's deputy in charge of the Soviet atomic program of the USSR A.P. Zavenyagin knew T.-R. and when he, sentenced to ten years and placed in a prisoner camp, was already close to death, ordered in 1947 to transfer him from the camp (Timofeev once told me that he was at that moment in a camp in the Pamirs) in the location of the "sharashka" in Sungul near Kasli in the Urals, where the Soviet authorities in 1946 began to deploy a research center as part of the Soviet atomic program. A plutonium production plant was built here, later called the Mayak Combine. Nearby, in the center of the Ilmensky Reserve, a secret camp for prisoners-scientists, "sharashka", was also created, where they brought barely alive T.-R. (“He could not stand on his feet, he was brought into the body on a sheet”). In this "sharashka" were not only Russians, but also captured German scientists who once worked with T.-R. in Germany, - Karl Zimmer, Nikolaus Riehl, Hans Born, Alexander Kach and others.

Hearing about T.-R., I fired up the dream of getting to summer practice in his laboratory, which I told both Tamm and Chetverikov. Together with me, students of the Biophysics Department of the Physics Faculty of Moscow State University, where I moved in December 1957 from the Timiryazev Academy, wanted to go - Valery Ivanov, Andrey Malenkov, Andrey Morozkin and my closest friend from Timiryazevka Sasha Egorov. Thus, I managed to put together a company of five people.

But how do you get there? Tamm knew T.-R. (in 1956 he invited him to come from Sverdlovsk, where he was in charge of a laboratory as part of the Ural branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, to Moscow for a Kapitsa seminar at the Institute of Physical Problems and spoke with him in front of a huge crowd of people, causing a surge of rage in Lysenko, about which he told me told at one of our meetings), but Tamm did not have a direct connection with him, and he could not help in organizing the trip. True, Igor Evgenievich immediately told me that he would give Sasha Egorov and me money for train tickets from Moscow to the Urals and back and for our life in the Urals, for which I was very grateful to him.

Therefore, it was necessary in some other way to get through to T.-R., but how to do it, I did not know. Soon after I shared this dream with Chetverikov, I received a caring, completely familiar letter from him, in which my desire was approved. He wrote to me, in particular:

Dear Valery Nikolaevich! You must feel how deeply and ardently I must be interested in both your own fate and the business you have undertaken. I am very attached to you and every event in your life, every success or failure deeply pleases or saddens me; therefore, do not forget me, the old man, and although I can hardly provide you with almost any direct business support, let your soul feel that somewhere out there, in Gorky, there is a person who is closely and with great participation watching your fate…

Sincerely Loving you
WITH. Chetverikov

Later I learned that Chetverikov wrote to T.-R. a letter with a request to take us to practice.

A month later, a letter came from Chetverikov (dated May 28, 1958), in which he said that T.-R. “I heard something good about the physics students in Moscow from Academician Tamm” and agrees to host us on a summer base in the Ilmensky Reserve. We got ready for the road and on July 2, 1958, and early the next morning we got to Miass. There we found the building of the administration of the Ilmensky Reserve, asked if they had any information about the car that should have been sent for us from the biological station, and learned that there was no car and no one had heard anything about it. After that, we threw our backpacks behind our backs and went on foot through the reserve along the road indicated to us. We had to walk about 15 km, it was early morning, and we decided that we would get to the place by lunchtime.

Three hours later we reached the bank of some narrow river and decided to have a short break and breakfast here. I have photographs of that breakfast, as well as a photograph of Sasha Egorov, who, bowing his head to the river, drank water from it.

By lunchtime, we really got to the biological station, where we were already worried about where we had disappeared. Nikolai Vladimirovich came out to us, who, despite the clouds of mosquitoes, sported his naked torso, exposing his heroic chest with gray hair to the fresh air and the sun. His first question, asked in an alarming and imperative tone, concerned whether we had stopped on the way to the station, and if so, where. When I told how we made a halt on the bank of a river, he was noticeably worried.

I hope you haven't drunk the water from this river? he asked me.

How could they not drink, drink, and how! - Not understanding his concern, I answered.

My words greatly alarmed Nikolai Vladimirovich. Only after some time did I understand what was the matter. It turns out that the Techa River flowed through the Ilmensky Reserve, in the upper reaches of which secret cities were built with enterprises for the production of enriched nuclear fuel and fuses for atomic bombs, and all the waste was poured into this river for years, therefore the level of radioactivity in those places is thousands of times, and sometimes and more exceeded the maximum permissible doses for humans. In 1957, a year before our arrival, at the Mayak plant, there was also a large-scale Kyshtym accident that affected the entire planet, when one of the storage facilities for highly concentrated radioactive waste with an amount of more than 20 million curies took off. Particles shot up into the atmosphere formed a monstrous radioactive cloud and additionally polluted the Techa River. The defeat covered a huge territory of 23 thousand km 2 (the so-called East Ural radioactive trace appeared), radioactive fallout reached France and Sweden. It was dangerous to drink water from the river, but the job was done.

The main scientific problem studied by Nikolai Vladimirovich's employees was precisely the damaging effect of radiation. Later he presented me with a thick collection of papers from his laboratory, published by the Ural Branch of the Academy of Sciences with a dedication, containing mainly radiobiological research. Apparently, his laboratory remained the only center in the country where they did not stop working on real genetics. The work was carried out under the patronage of nuclear physicists, the laboratory was classified, and physicists perfectly understood that radiation exposure requires a real genetic analysis.

A few years later, a trip to T.-R. I found myself at dinner next to Doctor of Sciences G. A. Sereda. In the conversation, I mentioned the name of Nikolai Vladimirovich, and suddenly Sereda told me that he knew him very well, since he was the director of an extremely secret scientific institution in which Timofeev worked. He told me that T.-R. He did not know how to keep the state secrets given to him to himself, and when Sereda handed over a secret plan of research that would have to be done to his group, he learned a few days later that secret information had been communicated to all members of the group and had spread throughout the facility.

Nikolai Vladimirovich told me, - Sereda said, - that without getting acquainted with the general plan of the study, it is impossible to expect from the employees an interested and thoughtful performance of the work. That each participant should know what to strive for and what is the ultimate goal of the work.

Sereda also told me about a curiosity. Before the new year, team leaders were ordered to apply for the instruments and chemicals that will be needed in the coming calendar year. T.-R. filed such an application, indicating 15 grams of one of the dyes for cytological studies. This dye was not produced in the USSR, but since the secret "sharashka" was attributed to the highest state category, applications from it were considered absolutely necessary. The typist who typed the final pivot table, instead of the abbreviation "r", put the sign "t" (that is, "tons"). The summary data was not given to anyone for verification, by the due date a special line was erected at another secret enterprise for the production of the necessary connection, and a separate carriage loaded with fifteen tons of dye went to the Urals. Such an amount of paint was not needed on a planetary scale, with the help of this "chemical muck" it was possible to paint all the rivers and lakes on Earth.

So, back to the story about our arrival in Miasovo. We were shown a platform not far from the shore of the lake where we had to put up a tent, we set it up, and our wonderful practice began. Nikolai Vladimirovich began the next morning by giving us a lecture on nature conservation. In those years the country was still dominated by Michurin's slogan “We cannot wait for favors from nature, it is our task to take them from her”, and nature was spoiled on a national scale (which, however, cannot be compared with today's pollution). T.-R. even then he realized the destructiveness of such an approach, angrily and colorfully told about the capital consequences for centuries of thoughtless destruction of forests, washing away and deterioration of soils, massive water pollution. It is not surprising that one of his charges - Alexey Vladimirovich Yablokov - later became such a passionate fighter for the environment.

A day later Timofeev showed us how to raise Drosophila flies, how to prepare food, how to euthanize flies with ether, and count mutations. In the next lesson, he gave an overview of the main types of mutations in Drosophila, then talked about the giant chromosomes of the salivary glands and showed us how to prepare preparations of these chromosomes. The workshop was interesting and useful. On July 8, he began to give us a course of genetics of 15 lectures. Each lecture took a total of two hours of time (sometimes a little more) and was read every other day, and in the intervals between them, the professor-mathematician from Moscow State University, Alexei Andreevich Lyapunov, began giving a course of lectures on mathematical group theory, set theory and their role in cybernetics. At that time, in the USSR, cybernetics, like genetics, was banned, and Lyapunov showed courage in popularizing the forbidden science (he became perhaps the most prominent mathematician who openly and honestly defended this science) and at the same time developing the scientific foundations of this discipline. So we are very lucky in this respect as well.

Lectures by T.-R. included the following sections (I will list them all in the form in which he himself formulated them, although I understand that many readers are not familiar with all the terms):

1. Cytology of heredity. Meiosis. Mitosis. Phases of the cell cycle, the process of identical reproduction, gender equality in heredity. Mendel's rules.
2. The development of traits of organisms, the polygenicity of many traits, the gene and potential for the development of a trait, sex-linked traits, reciprocal crosses, the interaction of autosomes and heterochromosomes, the possibility of chemical sex changes in fish.
3. Crossing over. Crossover interference. The interaction of genes and traits (physiological or phenotypic genetics). Bar- mutations in Drosophila and unequal crossing over. Position effect. “Each gene is in combination fields of activityneighboring genes, ”he said.
4. Phenomenology of gene manifestation. Penetrance (% of gene expression) and expressiveness (degree of expression of a trait). Expression of a trait in monoploidy, diploidy and heteroploidy. Lethal effects. Pleiotropy and polarity in the variability of elementary characters.
5. Sectoriality of somatic mutations. Morphogenetic connections, the role of hormones and other substances in the expression of genes.
6. Mutation process. The role of inbreeding in identifying true mutations. Clean lines. Genetic basis for breeding varieties.
7. Factors affecting the occurrence of mutations in spontaneous mutagenesis. The rate of evolution and the rate of mutation. Chetverikov's ideas regarding the accumulation of recessive mutations in genomes. Activation factors for spontaneous mutagenesis. Chromosomal mutations in Drosophila. Genomic mutations.
8. The role of heterochromatin in chromosome elongation. Analysis of the mutation process by laboratory methods. Target theory. Effect-dose curves. Time effects of mutagen application. Saturation curves.
9. Reverse mutations. Types of ionizing radiation (electrons, neutrons, protons, deuterons and alpha particles). Photoprocesses. Linear ionization density and hit effects. Formal effective lesion volume and absorption energy.
10. Spontaneous mutational process and microevolution. The prophetic views of S. S. Chetverikov on the role of accumulation of recessive mutations in evolution. After how many divisions can the effect of mutations be revealed at the phenotypic level? Stability of genetic structures and external factors (in particular, temperature).
11. Possible ways of genotype evolution. The presence of data that contradict the idea of \u200b\u200bthe chromosome as a carrier of a continuous hereditary molecule (gene continuum). Allelism, homologous attraction in conjugation. Gradual disruption of chromosome homology in evolution. Step alleles and pseudo alleles.
12. Microevolution. Intraspecific struggle. Quantitative analysis of genomic transformations according to Chetverikov. The main results of the study of Drosophila species in vivo by Chetverikov's group in the Caucasus and other species by Timofeev-Ressovsky and his wife Elena Alexandrovna in Europe.
13. Continuation of the lecture on microevolution. Elementary evolutionary phenomena. The concept of the species and the main features of the species. Populations as representatives of a species in certain areas. Panmixia. Stabilizing crosses.
14. Elementary evolutionary factors. The statistical nature of the evolutionary process. "Waves of Life" by Chetverikov.
15. Natural selection. Divergence of genes. Selection tail. Selection rates.

The most important feature of the lectures was that Timofeev not only tried to convey to us the basic scientific ideas, but also arranged them chronologically and sprinkled them with the names of scientists who entered the study of certain processes at different times. Several hundred names were named. Since he met many of those named in the West personally, the story about the history of the development of genetic views appeared vivid and vivid. Nikolai Vladimirovich did not have any notes in his hands, he read spontaneously, but such a volume of information was retained in his memory that it became quite clear: we have before us an absolutely unique person of encyclopedic knowledge on the history of genetics, who understands the genesis of genetic views as deeply as, probably, few others in the world. He often used chalk and drew diagrams on the blackboard. It was noticeable that due to his blindness he was doing a lot, in fact, without seeing his drawings, but from memory, but nevertheless, all the drawings and diagrams turned out to be clear and clear. Several times I visited Nikolai Vladimirovich's office in the laboratory building and saw that for reading he took a huge magnifying glass, probably twenty centimeters in diameter, and with its help tried to read the text line by line. But he walked around the summer base without glasses, knew how to distinguish all those around him, and if he did not know that he saw extremely poorly, then it was difficult to notice his blindness.

We were so delighted with the course of lectures given to us in Miasovo that I offered help in organizing Nikolai Vladimirovich’s speech in Moscow at the Physics Department of Moscow State University, and also said that I was closely acquainted with probably the most outstanding writer at that time, who published many books about the largest Russian scientists - Oleg Nikolaevich Pisarzhevsky. Three months later I received the following letter:

24.XI.58

Dear Valery!

We only returned from Miasovo for the holidays, where we worked a lot and wrote with Nick. Vl. several articles. He is still busy with all sorts of things and adding works. Therefore, I answer you.

From here we will go one of these days to Leningrad, where Nick. Vl. from 3.XII to 20.XII he will teach the course "population genetics and microevolution" at the University (at the Department of Genetics) and, in parallel, "the basics of radiation genetics" at the Institute of Physiology. Pavlova! We will be in Moscow from 25. XII and, apparently, until 10 January. At this time, Nick. Vl. with pleasure he will read to you, as he is just telling me, "as many reports as you like and about anything, everything that interests you." In Leningrad we will stay at Anna Benediktovna Gedova, B. Pushkarskaya, 34b, apt. 2, tel. B-2-51-89. Write or call us there - when you will arrange reports for Nikolai Vladimirovich.

Something incomprehensible happened with Pisarzhevsky's letter - it had been in the reserve for so long that Nick. Vl. received it already here, where it was sent from Miasovo. Please apologize to Oleg Nikolaevich on behalf of Nikolai Vladimirovich and tell him that Nick. Vl. very much wants to meet him and talk in detail about all sorts of things during our stay in Moscow (in Moscow we will live with Nadezhda Vasilievna Reformatskaya (Kompozitorskaya st., 25, apt. 2, v. G-1-30-50).

Good luck. Tell all of us biophysicists, including Cucumber and Gosha.

Yours E. Timofeeva-Resovskaya

Nikolai Vladimirovich called my friend from the Timiryazev Academy Sasha Egorov a cucumber for his strong elastic figure, who always enjoyed the special sympathy of a scientist.

Elena Alexandrovna did not write to me about a very important event that happened on that visit to Leningrad. At a meeting of the Academic Council of the Botanical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences T.-R. in December 1958 he defended his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Biological Sciences (the awarding of this degree was prevented by the Higher Attestation Commission of the USSR due to the false political denunciations of the Lysenkoites). It should be noted that in the 1950s T.-R. was nominated by several Western scientists for the Nobel Prize, but to the request of the Nobel Committee to the Soviet government about whether this scientist was alive, no response was received from Moscow, and the question of awarding the prize was removed from consideration, because these prizes are not awarded to those who have died.

Apparently, he really wanted to speak at the Physics Department of Moscow State University, because two weeks later I received a new letter written by Elena Alexandrovna:

Leningrad
9.XII.58

Dear Valery!

Nikolay Vladimirovich asks to write to you, that in view of the large number of lectures and reports that he will have do here - we will linger here a little and will be in Moscow only 27. XII in the morning. How and when will you give talks in Moscow - depends on you - we will stay in Moscow for two weeks. See you soon. Nikolay Vladimirovich sends you and all your heartfelt greetings.

Yours E. Timofeeva-Resovskaya

Head of the Department of Biophysics at Moscow State University L.A. Blumenfeld, to whom I passed on all the information received from the Timofeyev-Resovskys, together with Associate Professor S.E.Shnolem and Assistant Tusya (Natalya Alekseevna) Lyapunova, agreed in the dean's office that T.-R. took place in the Large Physical Auditorium on Vorobyovy Gory (it accommodated several hundred listeners and was packed to capacity). In addition, I made an agreement with Dmitry Dmitrievich Romashov, who worked in the Moscow Society of Nature Experts, for the section of genetics and selection to give Timofeev a lecture in their auditorium in the very center of Moscow (on the then Herzen Street). The interest in both performances was huge.

After the departure of the Timofeyev-Resovskys from Moscow to the Urals, Academician Tamm talked with Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences V.A. to academicians of the USSR Academy of Sciences. But still strong in influence in the USSR, Lysenko's members launched a vigorous activity to discredit the scientist as an alleged enemy of the Soviet state. Only after the removal of Khrushchev from the position of the head of the Bolsheviks T.-R. In 1976 he managed to successfully defend his doctoral dissertation on a set of works, but he never became a member of the academy.

In 1975, the famous geneticist Oke Gustaffson from Sweden came to the USSR (he was closely acquainted with T.-R. in previous years), I was appointed responsible for receiving Gustaffson in the USSR and proposed to the president of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL) P.P. Lobanov arrange a meeting with a Swedish scientist. Lobanov agreed, and I invited T.-R. to this meeting. He arrived with A. V. Yablokov and violated all the rules of the "official ceremony." Lobanov behaved perfectly, accepting all sorts of escapades of Nikolai Vladimirovich without irritation. I remember how at some point he said that scientists are just sitting on the neck of the state, and there is nothing from them, except spending money not earned by their labor to satisfy internal interests. Lobanov began to object, to which Timofeev retorted with a wonderful phrase that engraved forever in my memory: "Only ballet dancers, circus performers and taxi drivers earn by their labor." Everyone laughed, and the president of the academy only nodded his head in disappointment.

When the meeting was over, and we went out into the foyer, Timofeev and Gustaffson hugged, Nikolai Vladimirovich snuggled up to his old friend, grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and began to tell him (slowly choosing his words) that he was tired of living, that after the death of his wife, his existence here seems him wasted and unnecessary. He cried at parting and, without wiping away his tears, only repeated more than once: “I want to be with Lyol'ka” (“I want to see Lyolka”). Now, left without a wife, I perfectly understand Nikolai Vladimirovich.

Valery Soifer,
doct. physical-mat. Sciences, foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,
honorary Professor of Moscow State University, Professor Emeritus of George Mason University (USA)

Sat. "Scientific heritage", 2002, v. 28, ed. "Science", pp. 220-222.

On December 29, 1990, daughter-in-law SR Tsarapkina sent me the following letter in response to my request to tell more about the life of Russian scientists in Germany: “Sergei Romanovich Tsarapkin was a geneticist with a good knowledge of mathematics, especially variation statistics, which helped him a lot in his scientific work ... After graduating from university, he began working at the Institute of Experimental Biology, where he worked under the direct supervision of N.K. Koltsov. In 1926 he was seconded to Germany to work at the Brain Institute. There he met NV Timofeev-Ressovsky, who had arrived again earlier. From the very beginning, even when they studied in the group with S.S.Chetverikov, their relationship did not develop friendly, and then they completely deteriorated. In 1932 T.-R. participated in the International Genetic Congress in the USA. Sergey Romanovich and other laboratory workers T.-R. gave him their materials for presentation at the congress, T.-R. submitted them on his own behalf, without mentioning other authors. After his return, a scandal erupted, even Vogt himself publicly expressed his opinion on this incident. There were other episodes that characterize the discrepancy between the opinions of Sergei Romanovich and T.-R., which led to the fact that T.-R., being the head of the laboratory, practically did not give any opportunity to work, constantly changing and canceling the topic on which Sergei began Romanovich to work. Then these directions reappeared in the laboratory, but at the suggestion of T.-R. For forced reasons, Sergei Romanovich and T.-R. ended up in the same place in the USSR, in the camp and p / I 33/6. Relationships have not improved, but on the contrary. Ultimately T.-R. received a laboratory in Sverdlovsk, and the Tsarapkin family was sent to the city of Kostanay to continue their exile. Sergei Romanovich was unable to study science, he worked as a teacher of all subjects. In 1957, after serving time, the Tsarapkins moved to Ryazan, where they were allowed to leave. This link finally undermined the health of my father-in-law, and on January 15, 1960, after another heart attack, he died ”(quoted from a letter from K. A. Tsarapkina).

See interview with him in Repressed Science, pp. 252-267.

See the magazine "Uralskaya nov", 2002, No. 13.