Theorist of Lysenkoism who gave Lysenko the language of dialectical materialism and made the attack on genetics an ideological war
Born to a Jewish family in Toropets, he joined the party in 1921, graduated from Leningrad University's Faculty of Social Sciences and moved into biology, teaching dialectics of nature there from 1930. In the early 1930s he attacked ecologists and nature conservation as theories of class enemies. From 1934 he worked with Lysenko, teaching him Marxist theory and the language of party politics, and together they denounced Mendelian genetics as bourgeois science. In 1939 he sent Molotov a report denouncing Vavilov, and a widespread account holds that it led to Vavilov's arrest. After the August 1948 session of the Agricultural Academy he became dean of biology at Moscow University, but was removed in 1951; dismissed from the Academy in 1969, he died a few days later.
Also known as: Isai Prezent · Isay Prezent
Activities and affiliations
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1921–
Soviet Communist Party and Bolsheviks
Science and technology -
1930–1969
Soviet Union state institutionsChair of dialectics of nature, Leningrad University; VASKhNIL memberMain
Science and technology -
1948–1951
Soviet Union state institutionsDean of the Faculty of Biology, Moscow University
Education
Career Timeline
- 1921Joined the party; Komsomol provincial official in Pskov
- 1926Graduated from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Leningrad University
- 1930Head of the chair of dialectics of nature and evolutionary theory, Leningrad University
- 1932Class Struggle on the Natural Science Front
- 1934–1938Worked with Lysenko at the All-Union Institute of Selection and Genetics, Odesa
- 1935–1941Deputy editor of Yarovizatsiya
- 1939Report to Molotov denouncing Vavilov
- 1948Full member of VASKhNIL; dean of the Faculty of Biology, Moscow University
- 1951Removed from both universities
- 1969Dismissed from VASKhNIL; died