The International Workshop on Lysenkoism Part 6
"Lysenko and the Plot Against the Jewish Doctors"
Jonathan Brent, YIVO Institute for Jewish Doctors
Bronx Community College and Columbia University host a two day conference on the work and career of Trofim D enisovich Lysenko. Lysenko was a well-known Soviet geneticist who enjoyed great success under Joseph Stalin (General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953) by claiming to have proven that acquired characteristics in plants can be inherited.
This suited the promethean claims of the Soviet leadership that Communism could entirely transform agriculture, if only Western assumptions about genetics be ignored. The unhappy marriage of dishonest science combined with political opportunism remains a compelling story today, and the object of lively interest internationally among historians of science.
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