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Nikolai Koltsov

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Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov (Template:Lang-ru; July 14 1872December 2 1940), a Russian biologist. He was one of the creators of the modern genetics. Nikolai Koltsov was a teacher of Nikolay Timofeeff-Ressovsky.

Scientific career

He graduated from Moscow University in 1894 and was professor there (1985-1911). He established and directed the Institute of of Experimental Biology in the middle of 1917, just before the October revolution. He was a member of Agricultural Academy (VASKhNIL).

Research

The works of Nikolai Koltsov include those on anatomy of vertebrals and cytology. In 1903 Koltsov proposed that the shape of cells was determined by a network of tubules which he termed the cytoskeleton. In 1927 Kolstov proposed that inherited traits would be inherited via "giant hereditary molecule" which would be made up of "two mirror strands that would replicate in a semi-conservative fashion using each strand as a template". These ideas were confirmed to have been accurate in 1953 when James Watson and Francis Crick described the structure of DNA. Watson and Crick had apparently not heard of Koltsov. US geneticist Richard Goldschmidt wrote about him: "There was the brilliant Nikolai Koltsov, probably the best Russian zoologist of the last generation, an enviable, unbelievably cultured, clear-thinking scholar, admired by everybody who knew him"

Arrest and trail in 1920

Koltsov was arrested as a member of non-existent "anti-Soviet Tactical Center" invented by VCheKa in 1920. Prosecutor Nikolai Krylenko demanded the death sentence for Koltsov (67 of around 1000 arrested people were executed) . However, after a personal appeal to Vladimir Lenin by Maxim Gorky Koltsov was released and was restored to his position as the head of the Koltsov Institute of Experimental Biology.

Campaign against him and death

In 1937 and 1939, the supporters of Trofim Lysenko published a series of propaganda articles against Nikolai Koltsov and Nikolai Vavilov. They wrote: "The Institute of Genetics of the Academy of Sciences not only did not criticize Professor Koltsov's fascistic nonsense, but even did not dissociate itself from his "theories" which support the racial theories of fascists" . Kolstov died in 1940.. The same day his wife committed suicide

References

  1. ^ Valery N. Soyfer. The consequences of political dictatorship for Russian science. Nature Reviews Genetics 2: 723-729 (2001)
  2. ^ Vadim J. Birstein. The Perversion Of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science. Westview Press (2004) ISBN 0813342805
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