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[ONE OF THE LAST WORKS ON GENETICS PRINTED IN THE FIRST HALF OT THE 20TH CENTURY IN THE SOVIET UNION] Izbrannyye raboty po genetike [i.e. Selected Works on Genetics]

Morgan, Th.

Moscow: Sel’khozgiz, 1937. Item #1894

Vlll, 285 pp., 2 ill., portr.: ill. 25.5x17.7 cm. In original publisher’s brown cloth. Light staining of the boards, previous owner’s inscription on the title-page. Otherwise in a very good condition.

Scarce. First edition. Translated from English under the editorship of Nikolay Vavilov (1887-1943).
The last work by Thomas Morgan (1866-1945) that was printed in the USSR in the first half of the 20th century.
This is the first Russian translation of selected works of Thomas Morgan, an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and science author who won the Nobel prize in medicine in 1933 for discoveries elucidating the role that the chromosome plays in heredity.
The edition features 17 articles written by the author and concentrating on such topics as sex-limited heredity in drosophila, mode of inheritance of two sex-limited traits in the same animal, application of the theory of pure lines to sex-limited heredity and sexual dimorphism, etc. The importance of the book, aside from its textual side, lies within the fact that it represents one of the last works on genetics printed in the first half of the 20th century in the USSR. The flowering period of genetics (the late 1920s and 1930s) came to an end in the late 1930s when the field together with its leading representatives (N. Vavilov, N. Koltsov, Yu. Filipchenko) fell into disdain of the Communist regime. At around the same time, the agronomist Trofim Lysenko (1898-1978) started a campaign against genetics, later known as Lysenkoism. A movement that proclaimed genetics a fake bourgeoisie science was supported by Stalin, and as a result, genetics (including Mendelian genetics) and works of its leading representatives were suppressed (including those of Thomas Morgan) until the mid-1960s.
The edition is preceded with an introductory letter by Nikolay Vavilov, a prominent Soviet agronomist, botanist, and geneticist best known for having identified the centers of origin of cultivated plants. Nikolay devoted his life to the study and improvement of wheat, maize, and other cereal crops that sustain the global population. Criticized by Trofim Lysenko, Vavilov was arrested and subsequently sentenced to death in July 1941. Although his sentence was commuted to twenty years’ imprisonment, Vavilov died in prison in 1943.
Overall, an interesting publication printed a few years before the official Soviet ban on genetics.

Worldcat shows 1 copy of the edition at Indiana University.

Price: $950.00