Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky. Nikolai Timofeev-Resovsky Timofeev-Resovsky biography

Perhaps Timofeev-Resovsky would still have returned to Russia, but chance played a role. Immediately after the Olympic Games held in Germany, leaving the country was practically closed. Paradoxically, even during the war years, the research institute in Bukh continued to be listed as German-Soviet, and Timofeev-Resovsky lived there with a Soviet passport in his pocket. Several times Timofeev-Resovsky was offered to accept German citizenship, but he refused. He was only interested in work.

In 1945, parts of the Soviet army entered Berlin. Timofeev-Resovsky was arrested and sent to Karlag as an accomplice of the Nazis. From Karlag, where he was dying of pellagra, in 1947 he was pulled out by the Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Colonel-General of the NKVD A. Zavenyagin. Cured, raised to his feet, Timofeev-Resovsky was sent to the Urals in a closed laboratory. Mostly Germans worked there, who also got there against their will.

“We selected the staff of laboratories, specialists, dosimetrists, radiologists, chemists, botanists,” wrote D. Granin. – Naturally, the Bison (nickname of Timofeev-Resovsky) knew the Germans better, those with whom he had to cooperate all these years, but Russian specialists also gathered, whom they managed to find, which was not easy in that post-war period. When a young graduate of Moscow State University Liza Sokurova arrived at the facility, she was unpleasantly struck by the German speech that sounded in the laboratories, in the corridors. No wonder she reached out to Nikolai Vladimirovich. If he spoke German, it was still Russian. He invited everyone to his lectures. He forced me to study radiobiology, the biological effect of various radiations. Neither we nor the Americans had any serious experience then. Gained mind-reason empirically, looking for means of protection from radioactivity, tried; no wonder that they themselves "grabbed doses" - despite all the precautions, they got sick. You also need to learn to be careful. The work they were doing in Buch - the biological effect of ionizing radiation on living organisms - suddenly, after atomic explosions, became a formidable necessity.

During these years, genetics in the USSR was finally defeated, but this did not affect the work of Timofeev-Resovsky. In the laboratory, separated from the outside world by barbed wire, he was freely engaged in genetics officially rejected in the country.

All over the world, work with radioactive substances has begun. Created an atomic bomb, nuclear reactors, nuclear power plants. Protection of the environment, protection of living organisms, protection of man - all this confronted science for the first time. It was necessary to ensure the safety of work, safe technology. Young nuclear technology and industry posed many problems. Even physicists did not really imagine the necessary protective measures when using radioactive substances.

No one knew if Timofeev-Resovsky was alive, but in the West they continued to refer to his pre-war works. When the laboratory was disbanded and the Germans were released to their homeland, Timofeev-Resovsky was given the right to recruit his own scientific group and transferred to the Ural branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. There, from 1955 to 1963, he headed a department of the Institute of Biology.

In 1956, Timofeev-Resovsky created a unique biophysical laboratory in the Ilmensky Reserve, on Lake Bolshoye Miassovo, held seminars there (ironically called "trap") for young scientists from different cities of the country, laying the foundations of the radioecological scientific school.

“The Urals were lucky: fate brought a great and amazing person to our region. Hardly ever lived in the Urals, a thinker of such magnitude as Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky created and broadcast ... ”recalls one of his students, Professor Yu. I. Novozhenov (one of the authors of the memoirs collected in the book“ N. . Timofeev-Resovsky in the Urals).

Valery Soifer

Communicating during student holidays with Professor Sergey Sergeevich Chetverikov in the then city of Gorky, and during study 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.). In the 1920s he was a student of Chetverikov and since 1925 he lived in Germany, where he ended up under non-trivial circumstances. After Lenin's death, someone in the Soviet government decided that he must have a specially arranged genius brain (soon, however, it was found that the tissues of Lenin's brain were irreversibly deformed and even reduced as a result of a serious illness). Oskar Vogt, the director of two German institutes, the Kaiser Wilhelm Brain Research Institute and the Neurological Institute at the University of Berlin, was invited to the USSR from Germany. As Chetverikov told me, Vogt, having arrived in Moscow in early 1925, agreed to help organize a comprehensive study of Lenin's brain in the USSR, but for the time being, without putting things off the table, offered to start 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 number 19.

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

According to various reminiscences, since 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, 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, lived in Germany until the end of World War II.

T.-R. during his years in the West, he became a well-known geneticist, especially in the field of radiation and population genetics, established friendly relations with many scientists, including Niels Bohr. At first, he simply used radiation as a tool for inducing mutations, then he became involved in the study of the damaging effects of radiation. His closest friend Nikolaus Riehl (the son of a German engineer who was invited by Siemens to work in Russia at the end of the 19th century and married a Russian woman) studied until 1927, first at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, and then at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He was a specialist in nuclear chemistry, involved in the German project to create an atomic bomb, and often came to the Timofeevs' home, where they talked 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 immediately after the war, Riehl transferred to the USSR a huge amount of information about German atomic developments and was immediately included in the Soviet atomic program (he was even awarded 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 for the management 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 prison 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) to the location of the "sharashka" in Sungul near Kasli in the Urals, where the Soviet authorities since 1946 began to deploy a scientific center as part of the Soviet atomic program. A plutonium production plant was built here, later called the Mayak Combine. Not far away, in the center of the Ilmensky Reserve, a secret camp for imprisoned scientists, “sharashka”, was also created, where they brought the barely alive T.-R. ("He could not stand on his feet, he was carried into the corps 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.

When I heard about T.-R., I was inspired by the dream of getting a summer internship in his laboratory, which I told both Tamm and Chetverikov. Students of the Department of Biophysics of the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University, where I moved in December 1957 from the Timiryazev Academy, wanted to go with me - 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 to get there? Tamm was familiar with 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 Kapitsa's seminar at the Institute of Physical Problems and spoke with him at a huge gathering of people, causing a surge of rage in Lysenko, about which he tells me told at one of our meetings), but Tamm had no direct connection with him, and he could not help in organizing the trip. True, Igor Evgenievich immediately told me that he would give Sasha Yegorov and me money for railway 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 to get through to T.-R. in some other way, but I did not know how to do this. Shortly after I shared this dream with Chetverikov, I received from him a caring, completely native letter 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 your own fate and the work you have undertaken. I have become very attached to you and every event in your life, every success or failure, makes me deeply happy or sad; therefore, do not forget me, the old man, and although I cannot 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 following your fate…

Sincerely loving you
FROM. Chetverikov

Later I learned that Chetverikov wrote to T.-R. a letter with a request to accept us for 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 physics students in Moscow from Academician Tamm” and agrees to host us at the summer base in the Ilmensky Reserve. We got ready for the road and on July 2, 1958, and early the next morning, we reached Miass. There we found the building of the directorate of the Ilmensky Reserve, asked if they had any information about the car that they were supposed to send for us from the biological station, and found out that there was no car and no one had heard anything about it. After that, we threw our backpacks behind our backs and set off on foot through the reserve along the road indicated to us. We had to walk something about 15 km, it was early in the morning, and we decided that we would get to the place by lunchtime.

About three hours later we reached the bank of some narrow river and decided to have a short respite and breakfast here. I have photographs of that breakfast, as well as a picture of Sasha Yegorov, who, bowing his head to the river, drank water from it.

By lunchtime, we actually made it to the biostation, where we were already worried about where we had gone. Nikolai Vladimirovich came out to us, who, despite the clouds of mosquitoes, flaunted his naked torso, exposing his heroic chest with gray hair to the fresh air and the sun. His first question, in an anxious and commanding tone, was whether we stopped on our way to the station, and if so, where. When I told how we made a halt on the bank of some river, he became noticeably worried.

I hope you did not drink water from this river? he asked me.

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

My words greatly alarmed Nikolai Vladimirovich. It was only after a while that I realized what it was. 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 obtaining enriched nuclear fuel and fuses for atomic bombs, and all waste was poured into this river for years, so the level of radioactivity in those places is thousands of times, and sometimes and exceeded the maximum allowable dose for humans. In 1957, a year before our arrival, a large-scale “Kyshtym” accident occurred at the Mayak plant, which reverberated throughout the planet, when one of the storage facilities for highly concentrated radioactive waste with more than 20 million curies blew up. The particles shot up into the atmosphere formed a monstrous radioactive cloud and additionally polluted the Techa River. The defeat covered a vast territory of 23 thousand km 2 (the so-called East Ural radioactive trace arose), radioactive fallout reached France and Sweden. It was dangerous to drink water from the river, but it was done.

The main scientific problem studied by the staff of Nikolai Vladimirovich was just the damaging effect of radiation. Later, he presented me with a thick collection of works from his laboratory, published by the Ural Branch of the Academy of Sciences with a dedicatory inscription, containing mainly radiobiological research. Apparently, his laboratory remained the only center in the country where they did not stop doing real genetics. The work was carried out under the patronage of nuclear physicists, the laboratory was classified, and physicists were well aware that radioactive exposure required real genetic analysis.

A few years later, a trip to T.-R. I ended up at dinner next to Dr. G. A. Sereda. In a 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 was completely unable to keep the state secrets communicated to him, and when Sereda handed over the secret research plan that his group would have to deal with, he found out after a few days that secret information had been communicated to all members of the group and spread throughout the facility.

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

Sereda also told me about one curiosity. Before the new year, team leaders were ordered to apply for instruments and chemicals needed for the coming calendar year. T.-R. also submitted 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 assigned to the highest state category, applications from it were considered absolutely necessary. The typist, who finally retyped the summary table, instead of the abbreviation "g" put the icon "t" (that is, "tons"). The summary data was not given to anyone for verification, by the required date a special line was erected at another secret enterprise for the production of the desired compound, and a separate wagon loaded with fifteen tons of dye went to the Urals. Such an amount of paint was not needed on a global 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 of our arrival in Miasovo. We were shown a site not far from the shore of the lake where we had to set up a tent, we set it up, and our wonderful practice began. The next morning, Nikolai Vladimirovich began by giving us a lecture on nature conservation. In those years, Michurin's slogan "We cannot wait for favors from nature, it is our task to take it from her" still dominated the country, and nature was spoiled on a national scale (which, however, is not comparable to today's pollution). T.-R. even then he realized the perniciousness of such an approach, angrily and colorfully told about the capital consequences of thoughtless destruction of forests for centuries, washing away and damage to soils, and massive pollution of waters. It is not surprising that one of his wards - Alexei Vladimirovich Yablokov - later became such a passionate fighter for the environment.

T.-R. (right) preparing to swim in Lake Miasovo
(photo first published in "A Very Personal Book" by V. Soifer, 2011, p. 277)

A day later, Timofeev showed us how to grow fruit flies, how to prepare food, how to euthanize flies with ether, and how to count mutations. In the next session, he gave an overview of the main types of mutations in Drosophila, then spoke about the giant salivary gland chromosomes, 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 genetics course of 15 lectures. Each lecture took a total of two hours (sometimes a little more) and was delivered every other day, and in between lectures Alexei Andreevich Lyapunov, professor of mathematics from Moscow State University, began to read a course of lectures on mathematical group theory, set theory and their role in cybernetics. At that time, in the USSR, cybernetics, just like genetics, was banned, and Lyapunov showed courage by 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 that regard.

Lectures by T.-R. included the following sections (I will list them all as he himself formulated them, although I understand that many readers will not be 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. Development of traits of organisms, polygenicity of many traits, gene and potency of trait development, sex-linked traits, reciprocal crosses, interaction of autosomes and heterochromosomes, the possibility of chemical sex change in fish.
3. Crossing over. Crossover interference. Interaction of genes and traits (physiological or phenotypic genetics). bar- mutations in Drosophila and unequal crossing over. position effect. "Each gene is in combination conditions fields of activity neighboring genes,” he said.
4. Phenomenology of gene expression. Penetrance (% of gene expression) and expressivity (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 relationships, the role of hormones and other substances in the expression of genes.
6. mutation process. The role of inbreeding in the detection of true mutations. Clean lines. Genetic bases of selection of varieties.
7. Factors affecting the occurrence of mutations in spontaneous mutagenesis. Rates of evolution and rates of mutation. Chetverikov's ideas on 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. Curves "effect - dose". Time effects of mutagens application. Saturation curves.
9. Back mutations. Types of ionizing radiation (electrons, neutrons, protons, deuterons and alpha particles). Photoprocesses. Linear density of ionizations and impact effects. Formal effective lesion volume and absorption energy.
10. Spontaneous mutation process and microevolution. Prophetic views of S. S. Chetverikov on the role of the 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 ​​a chromosome as a carrier of a continuous hereditary molecule (a continuum of genes). Allelism, homologous attraction during conjugation. Gradual violation of the homology of chromosomes 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 natural conditions by Chetverikov's group in the Caucasus and other species by Timofeev-Resovsky and his wife Elena Aleksandrovna in Europe.
13. Continuation of the lecture on microevolution. Elementary evolutionary phenomena. The concept of the species and the main features of species. Populations as representatives of a species in certain areas. Panmixia. stabilizing crosses.
14. Elementary evolutionary factors. Statistical nature of the evolutionary process. "Waves of Life" Chetverikov.
15. Natural selection. Divergence of genes. Tail selection. selection rates.

The most important feature of the lectures was that Timofeev not only tried to convey to us the main scientific ideas, but also built them chronologically and poured out the names of scientists who entered into the study of certain processes at different times. Several hundred names were named. Since he personally met many of those named in the West, the story about the history of the development of genetic views appeared vivid and vivid. Nikolai Vladimirovich had no notes in his hands, he read spontaneously, but such a volume of information was retained in his memory that it became quite clear: we are facing an absolutely unique person with encyclopedic knowledge of 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 because of his blindness he did a lot, in fact, not seeing his drawings, but from memory, but nevertheless all the drawings and diagrams turned out to be clear and precise. Several times I visited Nikolai Vladimirovich's office in the laboratory building and saw that for reading he picked up a huge magnifying glass, probably twenty centimeters in diameter, and with its help he tried to read the text line by line. But he walked around the summer base without glasses, he knew how to distinguish everyone around him, and if you didn’t know that he saw exceptionally badly, then it was difficult to notice his blindness.

We were so delighted with the course of lectures read to us in Miasovo that I offered to help organize a speech by Nikolai Vladimirovich in Moscow at our Faculty of Physics, Moscow State University, and also said that I was closely acquainted, probably with the most outstanding writer of that time, who published many books on the largest Russian scientists - Oleg Nikolaevich Pisarzhevsky. Three months later I received this letter:

24.XI.58

Dear Valery!

We just 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 finishing work. 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 give a course on "Population Genetics and Microevolution" at the University (at the Department of Genetics) and in parallel "Fundamentals of Radiation Genetics" at the Institute of Physiology. Pavlova! We will be in Moscow from December 25 and, apparently, until January 10. At this time Nick. Vl. he will gladly read you, as he has just told me, "as many reports as you like and about anything, everything that interests you." In Leningrad, we will stop at Anna Benediktovna Gedova, B. Pushkarskaya, 34b, apt. 2, tel. V-2–51–89. Write or call us there - when you arrange the reports of Nikolai Vladimirovich.

Something strange happened with Pisarzhevsky's letter - it has been lying around 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 say that Nick. Vl. she really wants to get to know him and talk in detail about all sorts of things during our stay in Moscow (in Moscow we will live with Nadezhda Vasilievna Reformatskaya (25 Kompozitorskaya st., apt. 2, vol. G-1–30–50).

Good luck. Pass on from both of us to all "biophysicists", including Ogurts and Gosh.

Yours E. Timofeeva-Resovskaya

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

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

Apparently, he really wanted to speak with us at the Faculty of Physics 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 to here to do - we will linger here for a while and will be in Moscow only 27.XII in the morning. How and when do you arrange presentations in Moscow - it depends on you - we will stay in Moscow for two weeks. See you soon. Nikolai Vladimirovich sends you and all your heartfelt greetings.

Yours E. Timofeeva-Resovskaya

The head of the Department of Biophysics of Moscow State University L.A. Blumenfeld, to whom I conveyed all the information received from the Timofeev-Resovskys, together with the assistant professor of the department S.E. took place in the Large Physical Auditorium on Sparrow Hills (it could accommodate several hundred listeners and was packed to capacity). In addition, I arranged with Dmitry Dmitrievich Romashov, who worked in the Moscow Society of Naturalists, that the section of genetics and breeding would hold a lecture by Timofeev in their auditorium in the very center of Moscow (on what was then Herzen Street). There was great interest in both performances.

Already after the departure of the Timofeev-Resovsky couple from Moscow to the Urals, Academician Tamm spoke with Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR V. A. Engelhardt, and the two of them (knowing about the successful defense of their doctoral dissertation) nominated T.-R. Academicians of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. But still strong in influence in the USSR, the Lysenkoites launched a stormy 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. managed in 1976 to successfully defend his doctoral dissertation on the totality of works, but he never became a member of the academy.

In 1975, the well-known 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 suggested 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. He arrived with A.V. Yablokov and violated all the rules of the "official ceremony". Lobanov behaved perfectly, accepting without irritation all sorts of escapades of Nikolai Vladimirovich. 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 forever burned into my memory: “Only ballet dancers, circus performers and taxi drivers earn with their work.” Everyone laughed, and the president of the academy only nodded his head sadly.

When the meeting was over, and we went out into the lobby, Timofeev and Gustaffson embraced, Nikolai Vladimirovich clung 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 vain and unnecessary. He cried at parting and, without wiping his tears, only repeated more than once: “I want to be with Lyol’ka” (“I want to Lyolka”). Now, left without a wife, I perfectly understand Nikolai Vladimirovich.

Valery Soifer,
doc. Phys.-Math. Sciences, foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,
Honorary Professor of Moscow State University, Emeritus Professor of George Mason University (USA)

Sat. "Scientific heritage", 2002, vol. 28, ed. "Science", pp. 220–222.

On December 29, 1990, the daughter-in-law of S. R. Tsarapkina sent me the following letter in response to my request to tell more about the life of Russian scientists in Germany: “Sergey Romanovich Tsarapkin was a geneticist with a good knowledge of mathematics, especially variational statistics, which helped him a lot in his scientific work . After graduating from the 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 N. V. Timofeev-Resovsky, who had arrived earlier. From the very beginning, even when they studied in a group with S. S. Chetverikov, their relationship did not develop friendly, and then completely deteriorated. In 1932 T.-R. participated in the International Genetics Congress in the USA. Sergey Romanovich and other employees of T.-R. gave him their materials for presentation at the congress, T.-R. presented them on his own behalf, without mentioning other authors. After returning, 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 topics on which Sergei began Romanovich to work. Then these directions reappeared in the laboratory, but at the suggestion of T.-R. Due to forced circumstances, Sergei Romanovich and T.-R. ended up in one place in the USSR, in the camp and PO Box 33/6. Relations have not improved, quite the contrary. Ultimately, T.-R. received a laboratory in Sverdlovsk, and the Tsarapkin family was sent to the city of Kustanai to complete the exile. Sergey Romanovich could not do science, he worked as a teacher of all subjects. In 1957, after serving their sentence, the Tsarapkins moved to the city of Ryazan, where they were allowed to go. This link completely undermined the health of the father-in-law and on January 15, 1960, after another heart attack, he died ”(quoted from a letter I have from K. A. Tsarapkina).

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

See Uralskaya Nov magazine, 2002, No. 13.

The twenties were followed by the infamous 30s, when not only people, but also some areas of science were subjected to repression. Genetics was then considered the most provocative and ideologically unsustainable. And along with her cybernetics. What are these sciences whose laws do not obey the decrees 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 - executions.

Many were swept away then by fate. But there is an amazing example of when knowledge really was a power that turned out to be too tough even for such monsters of that time as Stalin and Hitler. In 2010, this incredible man 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 protagonist. The novel is called "Zubr", 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, and radiobiology. He was an extraordinary personality, titanic, bright and free! There were no iron "curtains" for him and could not exist.

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

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

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

During the war years until 1945, the scientist continued his scientific research, remaining a citizen of the USSR, about which he liked to publicly remind others. They say that when Berlin turned to dust under the rain of Soviet bombs, Timofeev-Resovsky went out under this very "rain" and bawled 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 were being charmed.

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

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 geneticists from power 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 turn him

as a joke. From the outside, his conversation with the investigator looked more like an interview of a certain gentleman with an annoying journalist. He shoved a piece of paper to the gentleman and demanded an "autograph", which, under the conditions of this conversation, would mean that the "interviewee" was an English spy. Timofeev-Resovsky 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 recognizing him as a Chilean spy. He doesn't care what people say about him after his death.

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

But the real work took place in a laboratory hidden in the Ilmensky reserve in the Urals. Soon, information was leaked to the people about who was in charge of this secret laboratory, and walkers were drawn to the unwitting hermit. To get to the teacher, they had to overcome the mountain pass on foot. Only at the Timofeev-Resovsky station, and nowhere else, could one hear lectures on genetics and the theory of microevolution.

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

When in the 1950s there was a huge leak of radioactive waste at one of the enterprises near Chelyabinsk, Timofeev-Resovsky suggested organizing a radiological center in this region to study the problems of radioactive contamination. Moreover (how unpatriotic!) - to make this radioactive reserve available for study by specialists from all over the world. Well, the academician of six academies of the world did not understand that radiation has specific features for a given region: it is "limited" by political principles.

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

l is convinced of this.

It was his colossal erudition that allowed him to talk about environmental problems associated with human economic activity long before the visible reasons. Whether humanity wants it or not, the scientist said, he would have to deal with the problems of the biosphere, connected with the need for a general increase in the bioproductivity 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 were quite a few truly great scientists who claimed that science does not provide any real knowledge. It only helps to organize our information about the world,

Timofeev-Resovsky died in 1981. Unforgiven. Unrehabilitated. Such is it, Soviet genetics.

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

(1900-1981) Russian biologist, one of the founders of radiation genetics

Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky was born in Moscow. On his mother's side, he belonged to the ancient aristocratic family of the Vsevolozhsky princes, so well-born that some Vsevolozhskys considered it unworthy to serve the "thin" Romanovs, who occupied the royal throne. On the paternal side, Nikolai is a hereditary Don Cossack.

He was 14 years old when the First World War began. Since that time, not only childhood has ended - normal life has ended.

Gymnasium student Nikolai Timofeev-Resovsky, like many of his peers, feeling patriotic enthusiasm, was eager to defend the Motherland. Having added a year to fit his age, in 1916 he ended up at the front. But military failures, blood, dirt in the trenches, the futility of the war and the approach of the revolution caused Nicholas to be disappointed. On the way from the front, under the threat of being shot, he ended up in a gang of Ukrainian "greens" who robbed the convoys of German troops. The return of Nicholas to Moscow was long and difficult.

Timofeev-Resovsky entered Moscow University and studied under the great teachers Koltsov and Chetverikov. Classes were interrupted by the call of students to the Red Army - there was a Civil War. And he became a Red Army soldier - he fought against the "whites". And again the university. After graduating in 1925, Nikolai Vladimirovich went to work at the N. K. Koltsov Institute without hesitation.

In the 1930s, there were heated debates around genetic research, physicists set the tone in them. In classical genetics, the gene was thought to be abstract and indivisible, and romantic physicists wanted to “split” it, like an atom, to get to the bottom of its essence.

A group of German physicists headed by Max Delbrück, who were interested in the section of genetics, invited Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky to teach physicists genetics, that is, to jointly study the phenomena of mutation.

The outstanding biologist traveled a lot to different countries and became widely known in the world for his work on genetics and the science that later became known as molecular biology. He proceeded from the extremely valuable theoretical heritage he received from his teachers Koltsov and Chetverikov.

In 1933, the Nazis came to power in Germany, and at that time the “revolutionary” terror unfolded in the USSR. Nikolai Vladimirovich and his family found themselves in a difficult situation. He was eager to go home, but Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov stopped him, saying: "Do not return - you will die!"

At this time, many scientists were arrested and shot. They persecuted Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, N.K. Koltsov, killed Karpechenko, Levitsky. In 1938, Nikolai Vladimirovich's brother, Vladimir Vladimirovich, an engineer at the Putilov plant, was shot. And Timofeev-Resovsky remains in Germany with a Soviet passport.

With the outbreak of World War II, genetics in Germany became a science used by the Nazis to justify racial inequality. The extermination of Jews and prisoners of war began in the death camps.

Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky continued to engage in scientific research, "raged" at scientific seminars and left the politics and social life of Germany outside his activity. But his eldest son Dmitry could not do that. His childhood and youth were spent in Germany, and, as happens with children in a foreign land, he was a passionate patriot of Russia. A talented and bright student, Dmitry during the war became one of the organizers of the underground Berlin Bureau of the Communist Party. Underground workers organized sabotage at military factories and distributed leaflets about the successes of the Red Army in the battles against the Nazis.

Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky was afraid for his son, but he helped print leaflets in his laboratory. Soon Dmitry was arrested.

The father was offered a terrible deal: the price of his son's release was cooperation with the Nazis. And he refused. Dmitry was transferred from prison to the Mauthausen concentration camp, from where he never returned.

In 1945, the scientist received an invitation to lead research in the USSR on the genetic consequences of radiation damage - the era of atomic weapons began. However, he was soon "by mistake" arrested, and his trace was lost in the Gulag. When they found him, he was dying of starvation. In the hospital of the Ministry of State Security, he was cured, and, remaining a prisoner, he began to lead a secret scientific institute in the Urals. Timofeev-Resovsky "came to the surface", received freedom (without being rehabilitated) only in 1955.

In the Urals, at the biostation in Miassov, the scientist developed methods of protection against radiation damage, and especially methods of biological purification from radioactive contamination of soil, water, and air. Nikolai Timofeev-Resovsky continued classical genetic studies, including those on the fruit fly Drosophila.

In the summer, biologists, physicists, physicians from different cities came to Nikolai Vladimirovich's seminars. These were the first schools in modern biology and genetics in our country after 1948. Together with his wife Elena Alexandrovna and the staff of the biostation, the scientist conducted a classic "Drosophila" genetic workshop.

Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky played an outstanding role in the restoration of true biology in our country and a special role in the formation of the Department of Biophysics at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University. At the end of the 60s, the scientist moved from Sverdlovsk to Obninsk in the hope of a wide development of scientific work and because it was the former Kaluga province - the birthplace of his ancestors, where the Timofeev estate was once located on the Rese River. Nikolai Vladimirovich and his wife could not know that among all the Moscow regions of the country, it was the Kaluga region that was distinguished by the greatest despotism of the repressive party authorities. It was these authorities that began to persecute the scientist and achieved his dismissal from the laboratory he had created. The reason: the "bad" influence on the youth of the former politarestant. The persecution of the party authorities deprived the Timofeev-Resovskys of the opportunity to engage in scientific work.

But new times were coming. The influential academician and director of the closed Institute of Medical and Biological Problems O. A. Gazenko, overcoming the resistance of the "organs", enrolled Nikolai Timofeev-Resovsky in his institute as a consultant. And the Moscow City Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League organized under the leadership of Nikolai Vladimirovich its Summer Schools in Theoretical Biology.

The scientist died at the age of 81.

The name of Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky became known only after the publication in 1987 in the Novy Mir of Daniil Granin's story The Bison. The story was translated into many languages, so not only Russian but also foreign readers could get acquainted with the personality and scientific activities of the outstanding scientist.

Personality in genetics: 20-30s of the XX century

(“Golden Age” of Russian Genetics – from Vavilov to “Vavilovia the Beautiful”)

Timofeev-Resovsky Nikolai Vladimirovich (1900-1981) - biologist, geneticist; Doctor of Biological Sciences.

Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky was born in Moscow on September 7 (20), 1900. In 1917, Timofeev-Resovsky entered the Natural Department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. With breaks in 1918-1919 associated with the service in the Red Army, he studied and worked at the University until 1925.

Even in his student years, N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky began his scientific and pedagogical activity: 1920-1925. - teacher of biology at the Prechistensky working faculty in Moscow; 1922-1925 - Researcher at the Institute of Experimental Biology under the direction of N.K. Koltsova and teacher of zoology at the biotechnical faculty of the Practical Institute in Moscow; 1924-1925 - assistant at the department of zoology under prof. N.K. Koltsov at the Moscow Medical Pedagogical Institute; 1921-1925 - Researcher at the Institute of Experimental Biology as part of the State Scientific Institute under the People's Commissariat of Agriculture (GINZ). Since 1922, he became a member of the Commission for the Study of Natural Production Forces (KEPS) at the Academy of Sciences.

At the invitation of the director of the Berlin Brain Institute, Professor Oskar Vogt and on the recommendation of N.K. Koltsov and People's Commissar of Health N.A. Semashko in 1925 N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky was sent to Berlin, where he created the Department of Genetics and Biophysics at the Institute for Brain Research in the vicinity of Berlin - Buch.

In 1935, he published (together with K. Zimmer and M. Delbrück) the classic work "On the nature of gene mutations and the structure of the gene", which became an important milestone in the development of the biophysical and molecular approach to the problems of genetics.

Timofeev-Ressovsky's research activity in pre-war Germany made a fundamental contribution to a number of areas of modern biology. Here he discovered and substantiated the fundamental principles of modern developmental genetics and population genetics. He also took part in laying the foundations of modern radiation genetics.

In 1937, Nikolai Vladimirovich received an order from the official Soviet authorities to return to the USSR, but N.K. Koltsov warned him that he would most likely be arrested in the USSR, and Timofeev-Resovsky refused to return to the Soviet Union. In 1945, the NKGB arrested Timofeev-Resovsky in Berlin and deported him to the USSR. The military collegium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR sentenced him to 10 years in prison as a defector, and he was sent to the Karaganda camp - "Karlag". When they found him, he was dying of starvation. As a specialist in radiation genetics, he was removed from the camp to work at Site 0211 on radiation safety issues. In 1947-1955. N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky headed the biophysical department of Laboratory "B" in Sungul in the Urals.

In 1956 N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky in Sverdlovsk at the Institute of Biology of the Ural Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences created a laboratory of biophysics. At the same time, he lectured at the Faculty of Physics of the Ural University (1955-1964). Timofeev-Resovsky defended his doctoral dissertation in Sverdlovsk only in 1963. In 1964, N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky was invited to Obninsk (Kaluga Region), where he organized and headed the Department of General Radiobiology and Genetics at the Institute of Medical Radiology of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. From 1970 until his death, Timofeev-Resovsky worked at the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the USSR Ministry of Health. He took part in the development of a program of biological experiments on artificial Earth satellites, as well as in the discussion and processing of the results of these experiments.

Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky - full member (academician) of the German Academy of Naturalists in Halle (GDR) - Leopoldina; honorary member of the Italian Society of Experimental Biology (Italy); honorary member of the Mendelian Society in Lund (Sweden); honorary member of the British Genetic Society in Leeds (UK); laureate of medals and awards Lazzaro Spallanzani (Italy), Darwin (GDR), Mendelev (Czechoslovakia and East Germany), Kimberovskaya (USA).

Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky died in Obninsk after a serious illness on March 28, 1981.

Timofeev-Resovsky was posthumously rehabilitated only in 1992.

Biography of N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky was the basis for Daniil Granin's documentary novel "Zubr".

Certificate of the researcher of the Institute of Experimental Biology Timofeev-Resovsky N.V. for a business trip to Germany for a period of 1 (one) year for scientific work at the Neurobiological Institute in Berlin. May 11, 1925