RUSSIAN SCIENCE
SIR,—Your correspondent, I. M. Billik, in criticising the article Russian Science, by Dr. Trevor I. Williams, appears to be seriously mistaken in his facts. The Russian geneticist Vavilov, whose work followed orthodox scientific principles, was not S. I. Vavilov, but Nikolai Ivanovitch Vavilov (1885-1942), whose obituary notice occurs in Nature, 156, 631 (1945). As president of the Lenin Academy, N. I. Vavilov was succeeded by his rival, Academician Trofim Lysenko— not Zysenko. It is interesting to note that Vavilov, who was educated partly in England, was politically unpopular because the foundation principles of Mendelian genetics are inconsistent with certain aspects of Communist doctrine. Thus, in order to preserve the State free from criticism, he and his leading colleagues were liquidated. Lysenko, on the other hand, founded his system of genetics upon philosophical principles compatible with Communism, and developed it by means of logical arguments that would not be regarded as scientific in any other country. Details of the controversy are to be found in various articles in Nature by E. Ashby (1946), S. C. Harland and C. D. Darlington (1945) and K. Mather (1942), whilst Lysenko's own book has been translated into English with the title Heredity and its Variability. Since Lysenko is now established it, a high and tin- _ assailable position by the State, it would seem that the mediaeval Scholastic methods of reasoning are once again looked upon with favour in the Soviet Union.—I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, 42 Hill Barton Road, Exeter, Devon.
DAVID J. M. Rowe.
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