Vladimir Pavlovich Efroimson

Vladimir Pavlovich Efroimson (; 21 November 1908, Moscow – 21 July 1989, Moscow) was one of the most prominent Soviet geneticists, a former student of Nikolai Koltsov, who was among the scientists who had to struggle against the persecution of geneticists in the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. He studied mutations and human genetics and was among the first to estimate the rate of spontaneous mutations in human genes in 1932 although this was published first by J.B.S. Haldane.

Life and work Efroimson was born at the Lubyanka All-Russia Insurance Company revenue house in Moscow (which was turned into the headquarters of the Soviet secret police after the October Revolution), the son of a banker and a nurse. He studied in an elite bilingual German school and entered the Biology division of Math and Physics Faculty of Moscow State University in 1925, where he studied under Nikolai Koltsov. In 1929 he was expelled from the university for his speech against the persecution of his teacher Sergei Chetverikov, the founder of population genetics. In 1929-1931 Efroimson worked in the Trans-Caucasian Institute for Silk Worm Growing in Tbilisi. In 1929-1931 he worked in Moscow Radiation Institute. In 1932 he published six scientific works and discovered the formula of mutation rate in humans. In December 1932 he was arrested for his participation in the "Free Philosophic Society". In 1935 he was freed from labour camps in the Altai region. He started to work for the Central Asian Institute for Silk Worm Growing. In one and a half years he made important discoveries in the silkworm genetics. In 1937 he was expelled from the institute under pretext of inefficiency at work, and the pure-bred lines of silkworms he had bred were killed and copies his book Genetics of Silkworm published by the USSR Academy of Sciences were destroyed. In 1939-1941 he worked for the All-Ukrainian Silkworm Station in Merefa and obtained his Candidate of Sciences degree from Kharkov University (1941).

During World War II Efroimson worked on the warfront as an epidemiologist, paramedic, and a German-speaking intelligence member from August 1942 through November 1945 and was awarded military decorations. In February 1945 he reported to the Military Council of his Army about unacceptable excesses against German civilians including the mass rape of German women. In 1968 Efroimson became the head of the genetics department of Moscow Institute for Psychiatry. In 1976-1989 he was a consultant for the Institute of Development Biology of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Russian-American poet Vladimir Efroimson (poet) is his nephew.