Experimental Stations of the Institute of Experimental Biology and the Development of Russian Genetics (1917–1929)

Abstract

The history of the experimental stations of the Institute of Experimental Biology organized near Moscow by N.K. Kol’tsov, the founder of the Institute, is analyzed, and the role of these stations in the development of Russian genetics is investigated. Under the conditions of postrevolutionary chaos, the transfer of research outside the city allowed scientists to continue working, simultaneously determining a number of features of the Moscow school of geneticists, in particular, the characteristic combination of experimental and naturalistic (field) research. These features were peculiarly reflected in the works of A.S. Serebrovskii who formulated the idea of ​​the “gene fund,” and S.S. Chetverikov, his students and followers, who demonstrated the genetic “heterogeneity” of free-living populations and their difference from Drosophila laboratory lines.