Nikolay Timofeev-Ressovsky

It was in this period that he met and married Elena Aleksandrovana Fidler (1898 – 1973), who was a student of the cytologist and biologist Nikolaj Konstantinovich Kol’tsov in Moscow; Elena became not only Timofeev-Resovskij's lifelong devoted companion but also his lifelong partner in research.

Nikolaj Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovskij, also Timofeyeff-Ressovsky (Николай Владимирович Тимофеев-Ресовский; 20 September 1900 – 28 March 1981) was a Soviet biologist.

He conducted research in radiation genetics, experimental population genetics, and microevolution.

His life was highlighted by scientific achievements in the face of severe personal hardship, including his imprisonment and working in secret scientific facilities of Soviet Gulag.

Timofeev-Ressovsky was a descendant of the old Russian school of scientists, characterised by broad naturalistic views on the world, simultaneously combined with exact analysis of causes and consequences and establishment of elementary phenomena.

He widely collaborated with physicists.

Known for his influential personality, he was a talented story-teller and teacher.

He is the author of the term 'genetic engineering'.

Nikolaj Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovski, began his university education from 1916 to 1917 at the Moscow City People's University named after A. L. Shanyavskij.

From 1917 to 1922, he studied at the First Moscow State University.

The First World War and the consequences of the Russian Revolution of 1917 interrupted his education for periods of time.

At the outbreak of the Russian Civil War, Timofeev-Resovskij was a follower of the anarchist Peter Kropotkin.

In 1918, he volunteered to serve in a small anarchist cavalry unit, which was part of the Green army, i.e., they were neither supporters of the Bolshevik Red army nor the White army of General Anton Ivanovich Denikin.

Eventually, in 1919, the anarchists joined the Red army.

During the period 1920 to 1925, Timofeev-Resovskij was an instructor and researcher in Moscow.

From 1920 to 1925, Timofeev-Resovskij was a biology instructor in the pre-Chekist district primary school in Moscow.

From 1921 to 1925, he did research at the Institute of Experimental Biology, of the Gosudarstvennyj Institut Narodnogo Zdravookhraneniya (GINZ, State Institute of Public Health), under the directorship of N. K. Kol’tsov.

Some of his research at the Institute involved Drosophila.

It was in a department headed by Sergei Sergeevich Chetverikov, the founder of population genetics and a colleague of Kol’tsov, that Timofeev-Resovskij started his genetics experiments.

From 1922 to 1925, he was a zoology instructor on the biotechnical faculty of the Moscow Practical (Applied) Institute.

Their eldest son, Dmitrij, was born on 11 September 1923.

During the period 1923 to 1925, Oskar Vogt, an eminent psychiatrist and neurophysiologist, was a visiting scientist in Moscow; he was director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft’s Institut für Hirnforschung (KWIH, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research) in Berlin.

In part, he was looking to recruit researchers for the KWIH, especially in the relatively new field of genetics.

From 1924 to 1925, he was a research assistant in Kol’tsov's department of zoology at the Medical Pedagogical Institute in Moscow.

In 1924, Timofeev-Resovskij began his publications in the field of phenogenetics.

In 1924, the Soviet government made an exchange agreement with Germany.

The KWIH was invited to establish a laboratory for brain research in Moscow, which it did: Институт Мозга (Institut Mozga, Institute of the Brain).

To reciprocate, the Soviets promised to help set up an experimental laboratory for genetics at the KWIH.

Vogt had good relations with Nikolaj Aleksandrovich Semashko, People's Commissioner (Minister) of Health.

It was Semashko and Kol’tsov who suggested Timofeev-Resovskij to Vogt.

Thus, in the summer of 1925, Timofeev-Resovskij, his wife Elena and his colleague Sergei Romanovich Tsarapkin (Zarapkin), left Russia for an unspecified period of time in Germany, which lasted 20 years.

Once at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Hirnforschung (KWIH Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research ), Vogt and Timofeev-Resovskij began implementing the other half of the scientific agreement with Russia.

In 1929 Timofeev-Resovskij became director of the Abteilung für Experimentelle Genetik (Department of Experimental Genetics).

In 1930, the KWIH moved to its new facility in Berlin-Buch, which was partly financed by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

The KWIH, with its departments of Neuroanatomy (Oskar and Cécile Vogt), neurohistology (Alois Kronmüller), Neurochemistry (Marthe Vogt), and genetics (Nikolaij and Elena Timofeev-Resovskij), and its hospital, the KWIH was one of the largest and most modern research facilities of its kind in the entire world.

He defended his doctoral dissertation in 1963 in Sverdlovsk, and he was awarded a Doctor of Science diploma in 1964.

As a private in the 12th Red Army, Timofeev-Resovskij took part in the last battle of the Civil War in the Crimea on the Polish front.

A paper trail of his education was swept away in the chaos of war.

Timofeev-Resovskij abandoned his education without a scientific degree; he left formal education with only a gold medal.

Even though he eventually became a recognized world-class scientist, he would later, as a requirement for employment, be required to complete his doctorate.