This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the report of Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov on "The law of homologous series in variation”. This report was voiced by Nikolai Ivanovich at the Third All-Russian Selection Congress in Saratov on June 4, 1920.
The law of homologous series in variation was printed as a separate pamphlet published on the occasion of the report(1). A detailed version of the concept of the law was published in 1922 in English in a leading international genetic journal.(2)
This edition, translated back into Russian, became the basis for subsequent reprints of the work of N.I. Vavilov. References and texts of the first three publications are summarized in a separate volume of works of the anniversary five-volume edition issued by the publishing house Science for the 100th anniversary of N.I. Vavilov.(3)
Our institute has historical connections with the period of active work and the legacy of academician N.I. Vavilov. Initially, we were housed in the same building as a group of academic institutes of biological and chemical profiles, including the Institute of Genetics, led by N.I. Vavilov before the ill-fated arrest in 1940, repression and the death of the scientist in the Saratov prison. A print with the inscription of Vavilov to the first director of our Institute, academician A.N. Severtsov is kept in the academic library in the building on 33 Leninsky Prospekt.
The next director, academician I.I. Schmalhausen in 1940, published the work of the head of the animal evolution sector, Professor S.N. Bogolyubsky (4), which was directly related to the N.I. Vavilov Law of homological series and later reissued.
The modern problems of the law of homological series were fleshed out in a part of the book of the molecular biologist B.M. Mednikov(5), published with the support of our Institute under the editorship and with the foreword of the director of A.N.Severtsov IPEE RAS Academician D.S. Pavlov.
A centenary of N.I. Vavilov himself, celebrating the world under the auspices of UNESCO, finalizing the IEMEH directive, transforming it into the IPEE RAS, academician V.E. Sokolov expressed his admiration for the genius of Vavilov in the introduction to the anniversary issue of the journal "Nature" in 1987. Recognition in the history of science as much as science itself should not be forgotten. (6)
The article in the journal “Nature” can be read here
1 Вавилов Н.И. Закон гомологических рядов в наследственной изменчивости. Доклад на III Всероссийском селекционном съезде в г. Саратове 4 июня 1920 г. Саратов, 1920, 16 с.
2 Vavilov N.I. The law of homologous series in variation. Journal of Genetics. 1922. V. 12(1): 47 – 89.
3 Вавилов Н.И. Закон гомологических рядов в наследственной изменчивости. — Л.: Наука, 1987. — 256 с.
4 Боголюбский С.Н. Происхождение и эволюция домашних животных. М.: Сельхозиздат, 1940. 168 с.— Боголюбский С.Н. Происхождение и преобразование домашних животных. М.: Сов. Наука, 1959. 593 с.
5 Медников Б.М. Избранные труды. Организм, геном, язык. М.: Т-во научных изданий КМК. 2005. 452 с.
6 Соколов В.Е. Великий современник. Природа. 1987. № 10. С. 4-5.