14 Facts About Nikolai Koltsov

Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov was a Russian biologist and a pioneer of modern genetics.

Nikolai Koltsov's career was cut short in Stalinist Russia after being falsely accused of supporting scientific racism.

Nikolai Koltsov established and directed the Institute of Experimental Biology in the middle of 1917, just before the October Revolution.

Nikolai Koltsov was a member of the Agricultural Academy.

Nikolai Koltsov was against the Tsarist regime but after the revolution, he opposed several policies of the new rule.

In 1920, Nikolai Koltsov was arrested as a member of the non-existent "anti-Soviet Tactical Center" invented by the VCheKa.

Prosecutor Nikolai Krylenko demanded the death sentence for Koltsov.

However, after a personal appeal to Vladimir Lenin by Maxim Gorky Nikolai Koltsov was released and was restored to his position as the head of the Nikolai Koltsov Institute of Experimental Biology.

However, "the biochemist Ilya Zbarsky revealed that the unexpected death of Nikolai Koltsov was a result of his poisoning by the NKVD", the secret police of the Soviet Union.

In 1903 Nikolai Koltsov proposed that the shape of cells was determined by a network of tubules forming a skeleton which was later termed as the cytoskeleton.

Nikolai Koltsov saw the role of gel-sol transitions in the cytoplasm as key mechanisms for the cell structure.

In 1927 Nikolai Koltsov proposed that inherited traits would be inherited via a "giant hereditary molecule" which would be made up of "two mirror strands that would replicate in a semi-conservative fashion using each strand as a template".

Nikolai Koltsov used the expression omnis molecula ex molecula based on Virchow's idea that all cells came from other cells.

Nikolai Koltsov suggested that electrical forces were involved in intracellular movement.