The First University School of Russian Genetics

Abstract

Professor Yu.A. Filipchenko founded the first department of genetics (then genetics and experimental zoology) in Russia in 1919. The first department of genetics in Russia made its first steps in the context of world science was facilitatedthrough contacts between leading scientists in genetics, who today are recognized as classics of genetics – T.H. Morgan, Yu.A. Filipchenko, N.I. Vavilov, W. Bateson, G.A. Levitsky, G.D. Karpechenko, F.G. Dobzhansky, H.J. Muller, M.E. Lobashev and others. The modern scientific and educational activities of the department are predetermined by its previous history and the staff of the department continues to develop the traditions of the educational and scientific complex. Teaching work is link inextricably with research work within the framework of a common problem – “Mechanisms of the genetic processes integration”. The formulation of a broad problem makes it possible to resist centrifugal tendencies, the cause of which may be the differentiation of interests and specific tasks of researchers, what, in turn, is fraught with the danger of training narrow specialists. The formularization of some unifying problem is traditional for the department and preserves the basis of mutual understanding between different geneticists, and emphasizes that geneticsis one of the most important general biological disciplines.