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Nikolaj Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovskij (
Russian: Николай Владимирович Тимофеев-Ресовский; 20 September [
O.S. 7 September] 1900 – 28 March 1981) was a
Soviet biologist. He conducted research in
radiation genetics, experimental
population genetics, and
microevolution.
He was Director of the Genetics Division as the
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in the 1930s, where he received direct funding for his research from the
Third Reich, who praised him as one of the world's best geneticists and trusted him because he was an opponent of Communism.
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.
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)
[10] in
Berlin. In part, he was looking to recruit researchers for the KWIH, especially in the relatively new field of genetics. 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.
In Germany (1925-1945)
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.
Together with the French geneticist of Russian origin,
Boris Ephrussi, and with the generous support of the Rockefeller Foundation, Timofeev-Resovskij organized an annual conference on biophysics, genetics, and radiation biology. This even continued right up to the start of World War II in 1939.
In 1932, Timofeev-Resovskij attended the 6th International Congress of Genetics, which was held in
Ithaca, New York. While there, he formed a friendly relationship with the plant geneticist
Nikolaj Vavilov, who was President of the Soviet Adcademy of Agricultural Sciences.
[9]
Timofeev-Resovskij stayed in Germany even after
Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. That the
Gestapo or the
Schutzstaffel (SS) did not give him trouble as a citizen of the Soviet Union is all the more remarkable since Vogt was harassed by the
National Socialists for reasons which could have translated into trouble for Timofeev-Resovskij. On the evening of 15–16 March 1933, members of the
Sturmabteilung (Storm Troopers) raided Vogt's villa on the grounds of the KWIH. The action had been taken in response to a denunciation by M. H. Fischer, a physiologist at the Institute, who was seeking to rise in the
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP, National Socialist Workers Party). The accusations against Vogt included making payments to the Communist Party, maintaining connections to Russia, tolerating Communist staff members, and dismissing National Socialist staff members. Not too many years later, Timofeev-Resovskij's eldest son Dmitrij, a student at the
Humboldt University of Berlin, was arrested in the spring of 1943 for being a member of the Berlin Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and making contact with Russian prisoners of war during
World War II. He was sent to the German concentration camp in
Mauthausen and executed by the Gestapo on 1 May 1945.
In 1935, Timofeev-Resovskij published the major work,
Über die Natur der Genmutation und der Genstruktur, with
Karl Zimmer, and
Max Delbrück; it was considered to be a major advance in understanding the nature of gene mutation and gene structure.
[25] The work was a keystone in the formation of molecular genetics. It was also an inspirational starting point for
Erwin Schrödinger's thinking, a course of lectures in 1943, and the eventual writing of the book
What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell.
In 1937, Timofeev-Resovskij and Tsarapkin were ordered back to Russia by the Soviet government. Going back to Russia was deemed impossible, as they would have to abandon their equipment and work in progress, as well as their students. Also, once back in Russia and under the political distortions of science and agriculture due to
Lysenkoism, they would, at best, have to disparage the work they had accomplished in the preceding 15 years. At the worst, they could be subject to the same fate as many geneticists under Lysenkoism who had been arrested, sent to the
Gulag and eventually died or were executed. In 1929, for example, Timofeev-Resovskij's former teacher Chetverikov had been arrested and exiled. In this light, they decided definitely not to return to Russia and they became non-returnees, but otherwise remained patriotic citizens of Russia.
Also in 1937, while Oskar Vogt had been director of the KWIH since 1919, he was dismissed from his position by the Nazis; he then became director of the
Institut für Hirnforschung und allgemeine Biologie (Institute of Brain Research and General Biology) in Neustadt/Schwarzwald. That same year, the Rockefeller Foundation extended an invitation to Timofeev-Resovskij to become head of the
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory of the
Carnegie Institution for Science. Timofeev-Resovskij declined the offer, but he had used it to negotiate improved terms for himself and his department at the KWIH.
Starting in 1944, in order to minimize the possibility of casualties due to Allied air raids and to also avoid falling into the hands of the Russians, all departments at the KWIH, except for Timofeev-Resovskij's were evacuated from Berlin-Buch to
Dillenburg, and later on to
Giessen and
Göttingen. Timofeev-Resovskij chose to remain in Berlin and await the Russians. He, as well as other German scientists, speculated that the Russian need for scientists would make collaboration with them better than with the Americans, who had far less of a need.
After the fall of Berlin, Timofeev-Resovskij was arrested by the Russians. However, Colonel General Zavenyagin recognized that Timofeev-Resovskij's experience in radiobiology and genetic effects of radiation would be useful to the Soviet atomic bomb project and ordered his release. Timofeev-Resovskij became director of the KWIH facility in Berlin-Buch and was visited by Zavenyagin, and also by
Igor’ Vasil’evich Kurchatov, chief scientist of the Soviet atomic bomb project. However, after being denounced by a visiting scientist in an Academy of Sciences delegation from Moscow, Timofeev-Resovskij was secretly re-arrested on 14 September by an element of the NKVD different from that under Zavenyagin.
Timofeev-Resovskij and Tsarapkin were sent back to Russia; both were incarcerated in the gulag – Timofeev-Resovskij received a ten-year sentence. On his way to the prison camp in
Karaganda in northern
Kazakhstan, one of the most terrible camps in the GULAG, Timofeev-Resovskij went through the
Butyrskaya prison, the central transit prison in Moscow. It was there that he met
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Even in prison, Solzhenitsyn noted, Timofeev-Resovskij organized a scientific seminar. He made a presentation on the biophysical analysis of mutations. Himself he was strongly impressed by the talk of unknown priest about "shameless death". The harsh conditions of his transportation and incarceration in the labor camp contributed to a significant decline in Timofeev-Resovskij's health, including the degradation of his vision brought on by malnutrition.
