Nikolay Nuzhdin

Nikolai Ivanovich Nuzhdin (17 April 1904 – 21 August 1972) was a Soviet biologist, agronomist, and geneticist associated with Trofim Lysenko and Lysenkoism. He was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1953.

Early life and education

Nuzhdin was born on 17 April 1904 in the village of Pozderino in Rostov Uyezd, Yaroslavl Governorate.

Career

From 1935, Nuzhdin worked at the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

On 23 October 1953, he was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Debate with Julian Huxley

In 1949 the evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley published an article in Nature criticizing the political suppression of Mendelian genetics in the Soviet Union and the rise of Lysenkoism. Nuzhdin responded in the same journal in 1950, defending Lysenkoist or “Michurinist” biology and accusing Western geneticists of misrepresenting Soviet science.

In addition to exchanges in the scientific press, Nuzhdin also participated in international debates over Lysenkoism. One of the few occasions when a Western geneticist and a Soviet Lysenkoist publicly debated occurred on 20 January 1954 at a session of the Pakistan Association for the Advancement of Science in Karachi, where Nuzhdin debated Huxley. In a speech to the general assembly, Sakharov accused Nuzhdin and Lysenko of contributing to the “shameful backwardness of Soviet biology” and of promoting pseudoscientific doctrines that had harmed Soviet genetics.

Nuzhdin was not elected a full member of the Academy. The episode has been discussed by historians as part of the broader decline of Lysenkoism in Soviet science.

Selected publications

Nuzhdin's work was mainly in genetics, evolutionary theory, and radiobiology.

Nasledstvennye izmeneniia i ontogenez ("Hereditary changes and ontogenesis"), Journal of General Biology, 1945 Rol' gibridizatsii v izmenchivosti ("The role of hybridization in variability"), Journal of General Biology, 1946 Kritika idealisticheskoi teorii gena ("Critique of the idealist theory of the gene"), in Against Reactionary Mendelism-Morganism, 1950 Darvin i michurinskaia biologiia ("Darwin and Michurinist biology"), Proceedings of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Biological Series, 1952 Sbornik rabot po radiobiologii ("Collected works on radiobiology"), ed. N. I. Nuzhdin, 1955