Download or read book The Rise and Fall of T D Lysenko written by Zhores A. Medvedev and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the story of the Soviets from 1937-1964 in three ways; historically, by the author as a witness, and by the author as an active participant to the final stages of Lysenkoism, which he helped to topple.
Download or read book Rise and Fall of T d Lysenko written by Zhores A. Medvedev and published by . This book was released on with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The rise and fall of T D Lysenko written by Žores Aleksandrovič Medvedev and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of T D Lysenko written by Jores Aleksandrovitch Medvedev and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Critical Encounters written by Cathy Caruth and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lysenko s Ghost written by Loren Graham and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-11 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko became one of the most notorious figures in twentieth-century science after his genetic theories were discredited decades ago. Yet some scientists, even in the West, now claim that discoveries in the field of epigenetics prove that he was right after all. Seeking to get to the bottom of Lysenko’s rehabilitation in certain Russian scientific circles, Loren Graham reopens the case, granting his theories an impartial hearing to determine whether new developments in molecular biology validate his claims. In the 1930s Lysenko advanced a “theory of nutrients” to explain plant development, basing his insights on experiments which, he claimed, showed one could manipulate environmental conditions such as temperature to convert a winter wheat variety into a spring variety. He considered the inheritance of acquired characteristics—which he called the “internalization of environmental conditions”—the primary mechanism of heredity. Although his methods were slipshod and his results were never duplicated, his ideas fell on fertile ground during a time of widespread famine in the Soviet Union. Recently, a hypothesis called epigenetic transgenerational inheritance has suggested that acquired characteristics may indeed occasionally be passed on to offspring. Some biologists dispute the evidence for this hypothesis. Loren Graham examines these arguments, both in Russia and the West, and shows how, in Russia, political currents are particularly significant in affecting the debates.
Download or read book The Lysenko Controversy as a Global Phenomenon written by William DeJong-Lambert and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov written by Peter Pringle and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-05-13 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov, acclaimed journalist and author Peter Pringle recreates the extraordinary life and tragic end of one of the great scientists of the twentieth century. In a drama of love, revolution, and war that rivals Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, Pringle tells the story of a young Russian scientist, Nikolai Vavilov, who had a dream of ending hunger and famine in the world. Vavilov's plan would use the emerging science of genetics to breed super plants that could grow anywhere, in any climate, in sandy deserts and freezing tundra, in drought and flood. He would launch botanical expeditions to find these vanishing genes, overlooked by early farmers ignorant of Mendel's laws of heredity. He called it a "mission for all humanity." To the leaders of the young Soviet state, Vavilov's dream fitted perfectly into their larger scheme for a socialist utopia. Lenin supported the adventurous Vavilov, a handsome and seductive young professor, as he became an Indiana Jones, hunting lost botanical treasures on five continents. In a former tsarist palace in what is now St. Petersburg, Vavilov built the world's first seed bank, a quarter of a million specimens, a magnificent living museum of plant diversity that was the envy of scientists everywhere and remains so today. But when Lenin died in 1924 and Stalin took over, Vavilov's dream turned into a nightmare. This son of science was from a bourgeois background, the class of society most despised and distrusted by the Bolsheviks. The new cadres of comrade scientists taunted and insulted him, and Stalin's dreaded secret police built up false charges of sabotage and espionage. Stalin's collectivization of farmland caused chaos in Soviet food production, and millions died in widespread famine. Vavilov's master plan for improving Soviet crops was designed to work over decades, not a few years, and he could not meet Stalin's impossible demands for immediate results. In Stalin's Terror of the 1930s, Russian geneticists were systematically repressed in favor of the peasant horticulturalist Trofim Lysenko, with his fraudulent claims and speculative theories. Vavilov was the most famous victim of this purge, which set back Russian biology by a generation and caused the country untold harm. He was sentenced to death, but unlike Galileo, he refused to recant his beliefs and, in the most cruel twist, this humanitarian pioneer scientist was starved to death in the gulag. Pringle uses newly opened Soviet archives, including Vavilov's secret police file, official correspondence, vivid expedition reports, previously unpublished family letters and diaries, and the reminiscences of eyewitnesses to bring us this intensely human story of a brilliant life cut short by anti-science demagogues, ideology, censorship, and political expedience.
Download or read book The Lysenko Controversy as a Global Phenomenon Volume 1 written by William deJong-Lambert and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume covers the global history of the Lysenko controversy, while exploring in greater depth the background of D. Lysenko’s career and influence in the USSR. By presenting the rise and fall of T.D. Lysenko in a variety of aspects—his influence upon art, unrecognized predecessors, and the extent to which genetics continued in the USSR even while he was in power, and the revival of his reputation today—the authors provide a fresh perspective on one of the most notorious episodes in the history of science.
Download or read book The Lysenko Affair written by David Joravsky and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lysenko affair was perhaps the most bizarre chapter in the history of modern science. For thirty years, until 1965, Soviet genetics was dominated by a fanatical agronomist who achieved dictatorial power over genetics and plant science as well as agronomy. "A standard source both for Soviet specialists and for sociologists of science."—American Journal of Sociology "Joravsky has produced . . . the most detailed and authoritative treatment of Lysenko and his view on genetics."—New York Times Book Review
Download or read book The Lysenko Controversy as a Global Phenomenon Volume 2 written by William deJong-Lambert and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the international impact of Lysenkoism in its namesake’s heyday and the reasons behind Lysenko’s rehabilitation in Russia today. By presenting the rise and fall of T.D. Lysenko in its various aspects, the authors provide a fresh perspective on one of the most notorious episodes in the history of science.
Download or read book The Skeptic s Dictionary written by Robert Carroll and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wealth of evidence for doubters and disbelievers "Whether it's the latest shark cartilage scam, or some new 'repressed memory' idiocy that besets you, I suggest you carry a copy of this dictionary at all times, or at least have it within reach as first aid for psychic attacks. We need all the help we can get." -James Randi, President, James Randi Educational Foundation, randi.org "From alternative medicine, aliens, and psychics to the farthest shores of science and beyond, Robert Carroll presents a fascinating look at some of humanity's most strange and wonderful ideas. Refreshing and witty, both believers and unbelievers will find this compendium complete and captivating. Buy this book and feed your head!" -Clifford Pickover, author of The Stars of Heaven and Dreaming the Future "A refreshing compendium of clear thinking, a welcome and potent antidote to the reams of books on the supernatural and pseudoscientific." -John Allen Paulos, author of Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper "This book covers an amazing range of topics and can protect many people from being scammed." -Stephen Barrett, M.D., quackwatch.org Featuring close to 400 definitions, arguments, and essays on topics ranging from acupuncture to zombies, The Skeptic's Dictionary is a lively, commonsense trove of detailed information on all things supernatural, occult, paranormal, and pseudoscientific. It covers such categories as alternative medicine; cryptozoology; extraterrestrials and UFOs; frauds and hoaxes; junk science; logic and perception; New Age energy; and the psychic. For the open-minded seeker, the soft or hardened skeptic, and the believing doubter, this book offers a remarkable range of information that puts to the test the best arguments of true believers.
Download or read book Stalin and the Scientists written by Simon Ings and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the finest, most gripping surveys of the history of Russian science in the twentieth century.” —Douglas Smith, author of Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy Stalin and the Scientists tells the story of the many gifted scientists who worked in Russia from the years leading up to the revolution through the death of the “Great Scientist” himself, Joseph Stalin. It weaves together the stories of scientists, politicians, and ideologues into an intimate and sometimes horrifying portrait of a state determined to remake the world. They often wreaked great harm. Stalin was himself an amateur botanist, and by falling under the sway of dangerous charlatans like Trofim Lysenko (who denied the existence of genes), and by relying on antiquated ideas of biology, he not only destroyed the lives of hundreds of brilliant scientists, he caused the death of millions through famine. But from atomic physics to management theory, and from radiation biology to neuroscience and psychology, these Soviet experts also made breakthroughs that forever changed agriculture, education, and medicine. A masterful book that deepens our understanding of Russian history, Stalin and the Scientists is a great achievement of research and storytelling, and a gripping look at what happens when science falls prey to politics. Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction in 2016 A New York Times Book Review “Paperback Row” selection “Ings’s research is impressive and his exposition of the science is lucid . . . Filled with priceless nuggets and a cast of frauds, crackpots and tyrants, this is a lively and interesting book, and utterly relevant today.” —The New York Times Book Review “A must read for understanding how the ideas of scientific knowledge and technology were distorted and subverted for decades across the Soviet Union.” —The Washington Post
Download or read book Agrobiology written by Trofim Lysenko and published by . This book was released on 1954 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theoretical principles of vernalization; Plant breeding and the theory of phasic development of plants; The reorganization of seed growing; The intravarietal crossing of self-pollinating plants; Two trends in genetics; Collective-farm laboratories and agronomic science; Intravarietal crossing and mendel's so-called "law" of segregation; The creator of soviet agrobiology (On the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the death of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin); Michurin's theory at the all-union agricultural exhibition; Ways of controlling plant organisms; New achievements in controlling the nature of plants; Organism and environment; Engels and certain problems of darwinism; What is michurin genetics?; K. A. Timiryazev and the tasks of our agrobiology; Hered ity and its variability; Natural selection and intraspecific competition; Genetics; The tasks of the lenin academy of agricultural sciences of the U.S.S.R.; Why bourgeois science is up in arms against the works of soviet scientists; The situation in biological science; Experimental hill sowing of forest belts; New developments in the science of biological species; Vitality of plant and animal organisms; The conversion of nonwintering spring varieties into winterhardy winter varieties.
Download or read book Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science written by Valerii Soifer and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Dr. Soyfer, a former Soviet scientist who had met Lysenko, documents the destruction of science and scientists under the influence of Lysenko. Contrary to numerous opinions, Lysenko was an poorly educated agronomist who happened to have been in the right place at the right time: In the '30s, "Pravda" wrote him up as a pioneering scientist. Recognizing that newspapers and popular support could fuel his rise to the top of Soviet society, he set about making a name for himself as a scientist in non-academic journals and periodicals. His peasant upbringing and miraculous findings--never empirically proven or duplicated--made him a star proletarian scientist, the kind needed to bring about true Communism. Along his way to the top, he was assisted by many people who thought him a sincere, but ill preparted, scientist; he later had many of these people purged after gaining the almost total support of Stalin and Khrushchev. His grand claims of producing superior cattle and wheat, among other things, consistently failed, yet no one dared oppose or even question his policies. Whether to propel himself upward, bring down the academics he apparently detested, or protect himself and his "science", Lysenko nearly eliminated all serious work in genetics, agriculture, and biology from the '30s into the '60s. Numerous scientists were exiled, fired, or executed during his reign as the people's scientist; according to the author, the effects still linger in Russia. An amazing story of how, when politics decrees what science is acceptable and how it is going to work in the political paradigm, the results can be tragic.
Download or read book Stalinist Science written by Nikolai Krementsov and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1996-11-25 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some scholars have viewed the Soviet state and science as two monolithic entities--with bureaucrats as oppressors, and scientists as defenders of intellectual autonomy. Based on previously unknown documents from the archives of state and Communist Party agencies and of numerous scientific institutions, Stalinist Science shows that this picture is oversimplified. Even the reinstated Science Department within the Central Committee was staffed by a leading geneticist and others sympathetic to conventional science. In fact, a symbiosis of state bureaucrats and scientists established a much more terrifying system of control over the scientific community than any critic of Soviet totalitarianism had feared. Some scientists, on the other hand, developed more elaborate devices to avoid and exploit this control system than any advocate of academic freedom could have reasonably hoped. Nikolai Krementsov argues that the model of Stalinist science, already taking hold during the thirties, was reversed by the need for inter-Allied cooperation during World War II. Science, as a tool for winning the war and as a diplomatic and propaganda instrument, began to enjoy higher status, better funding, and relative autonomy. Even the reinstated Science Department within the Central Committee was staffed by a leading geneticist and others sympathetic to conventional science. However, the onset of the Cold War led to a campaign for eliminating such servility to the West. Then the Western links that had benefited genetics and other sciences during the war and through 1946 became a liability, and were used by Lysenko and others to turn back to the repressive past and to delegitimate whole research directions.
Download or read book Fractured Times written by Eric Hobsbawm and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eric Hobsbawm, who passed away in 2012, was one of the most brilliant and original historians of our age. Through his work, he observed the great twentieth-century confrontation between bourgeois fin de siècle culture and myriad new movements and ideologies, from communism and extreme nationalism to Dadaism to the emergence of information technology. In Fractured Times, Hobsbawm, with characteristic verve, unpacks a century of cultural fragmentation. Hobsbawm examines the conditions that both created the flowering of the belle époque and held the seeds of its disintegration: paternalistic capitalism, globalization, and the arrival of a mass consumer society. Passionate but never sentimental, he ranges freely across subjects as diverse as classical music, the fine arts, rock music, and sculpture. He records the passing of the golden age of the “free intellectual” and explores the lives of forgotten greats; analyzes the relationship between art and totalitarianism; and dissects phenomena as diverse as surrealism, art nouveau, the emancipation of women, and the myth of the American cowboy. Written with consummate imagination and skill, Fractured Times is the last book from one of our greatest modern-day thinkers.
