Question 1

Who was Nikolai Vavilov?

Accepted Answer

A Soviet botanist and geneticist who assembled the world's first great **seed bank** to secure food supplies against famine, and who died of starvation in a Soviet prison in 1943 — a fate that is among the clearest illustrations of what happens when ideology overrules science.

**What he did.** Vavilov led more than a hundred collecting expeditions across five continents, gathering hundreds of thousands of seed samples of crops and their wild relatives. His purpose was practical: to find the genetic diversity that would allow breeding of varieties resistant to disease, drought and cold, and so to end the recurring famines of the Russian countryside.

**His scientific contribution**, which is substantial and frequently overlooked behind the story of his death:

**Centres of origin.** He identified the geographic regions where crops were first domesticated, reasoning that the greatest **genetic diversity** of a species indicates where it originated. The concept underpins modern plant genetic resource conservation.

**The law of homologous series**, describing parallel variation across related species, which allowed breeders to predict which traits might be found.

**The institute and collection**, which became a model for seed banks worldwide.

**Why he was destroyed.** **Trofim Lysenko**, an agronomist with no meaningful scientific training, promoted theories rejecting Mendelian genetics in favour of the claim that acquired characteristics could be inherited — ideas that aligned with Soviet ideology and promised rapid results. Lysenko gained Stalin's backing. Genetics was denounced as bourgeois pseudoscience, and Vavilov, who opposed him publicly, was arrested in 1940, sentenced to death, and died in prison of malnutrition.

**Lysenkoism devastated Soviet agriculture** for decades and was exported, with catastrophic consequences.

**The collection survived.** During the 900-day siege of Leningrad, staff at the institute guarded the seed bank while the city starved. **Several of them died of starvation surrounded by edible seeds and grain** they refused to eat, because the collection was intended to feed future generations. It is among the most extraordinary acts in the history of science.

Question 2

Who was Alexander von Humboldt?

Accepted Answer

Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was a Prussian naturalist and explorer who established the idea that nature is an interconnected system — a conception so thoroughly absorbed into modern thinking

Question 3

Who was Fritz Haber?

Accepted Answer

A German chemist whose work both feeds much of the world and killed on an industrial scale — arguably the most morally difficult figure in the history of science, and a useful corrective to the idea

Question 4

Who was Norman Borlaug?

Accepted Answer

An American agronomist whose wheat breeding is credited with averting famine across South Asia and Latin America — plausibly having saved more lives than any other individual, and almost unknown

Question 5

Who was Alfred Russel Wallace?

Accepted Answer

The naturalist who independently arrived at the theory of evolution by natural selection, prompting Darwin to publish — and who is a striking example of how scientific credit attaches to circumstance

Question 6

Could Anastasia have survived?

Accepted Answer

No — and this is one of the few historical mysteries that has been definitively closed, by DNA evidence, after decades in which it was genuinely open. The original uncertainty. The Romanov family

Question 7

Who was Ignaz Semmelweis and why was he ignored?

Accepted Answer

A Hungarian physician who discovered that handwashing dramatically reduced deaths in childbirth — and was rejected, ridiculed and ultimately institutionalised for it. The observation. Working at the

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