1898-1976

Russian Horticulturist

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was born in Karlovka near Poltav, Russia. Despite good grades in school, Lysenko, a peasant's son, struggled to receive an education in pre-Revolutionary Czarist Russia. He became a gardener and, after the 1917 Revolution, undertook studies at the Uman School of Horticulture. After graduating in 1921, Lysenko received an appointment to work at the Belaya Tserkov Agricultural Selection Station. In 1925, Lysenko received his doctorate from the Kiev Agricultural Institute. Following his graduation, Lysenko worked at the Gyandzha Experimental Station and, subsequently, at the Ukrainian All-Union Institute of Selection and Genetics in Odessa. Eventually, with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's (1879-1953) patronage, Lysenko became the director of the Odessa All-Union Selection and Genetics Institute.

Late in the 1920s, Lysenko began to advocate an outmoded Lamarckian view of genetics to harden Soviet crops against the brutal Russian winters. Lysenko's conclusions were based upon...