20 Facts About Yuri Filipchenko

Yuri Filipchenko established a genetics laboratory in Leningrad undertaking experimental work with Drosophila melanogaster.

Yuri Filipchenko was born on February 13,1882, in Zlyn' in Bolkhovsky District of the Russian Empire.

Yuri Filipchenko's father was Aleksandrovich Efimovich, a landowner and agriculturalist.

Yuri Filipchenko had a brother by the name of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, who would later become a parasitologist and physician.

Yuri Filipchenko received his secondary education at the Second Saint Petersburg Classical Gymnasium.

Yuri Filipchenko graduated from Second Saint Petersburg in 1900, but due to a variety of financial difficulties that were further complicated by his father's death, he entered the Military Medical Academy.

However, Yuri Filipchenko soon transferred to the natural science division at Saint Petersburg State University only a year after entering the academy.

Yuri Filipchenko was arrested in December 1905 due to being present at a meeting of the Soviet Workers' Deputies, but was released shortly afterwards.

However, Yuri Filipchenko was arrested later the same month after helping to organize workers in the Nevsky District of Saint Petersburg, serving four months in prison during which he studied both philosophy and for government examinations.

Yuri Filipchenko pursued comparative embryology for his candidate's thesis due to his interest in the presentation and evolution of physical characteristics in animals.

Yuri Filipchenko created the first department of genetics in Russia at Saint Petersburg State University in 1919, which would, by 1921, become the Bureau of Eugenics at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg.

However, in the wake of the first five-year plan, Yuri Filipchenko became publicly castigated for his work in orthogenesis and in eugenics and was relieved of his position at Saint Petersburg State University in 1930.

Yuri Filipchenko was married to Nadezhda Pavlovna, with whom he had a son by the name of Gleb, who was a physicist.

Yuri Filipchenko developed a severe headache whilst working at Peterhof, and concerned about his health, traveled to Leningrad to be taken care of by his brother Aleksandr.

Yuri Filipchenko's head was donated to Bekhterev's Brain Institute for research, while the rest of his remains were buried in Smolensky Cemetery.

Yuri Filipchenko did not subscribe to the belief that Darwin's concept of natural selection was as integral to the process of evolution as Darwin espoused, instead positing that evolution was not governed by the principles of Lamarck or natural selection, but rather was intrinsic to life itself.

Yuri Filipchenko believed that evolution in animals and plants was an inherent developmental process rather than a change induced over successive generations, a process that an organism's environment can affect, but only indirectly.

Yuri Filipchenko was drawn to eugenics due to both its potential to be used as a "civic religion" and its promise of a better future for the Soviets, but due to the immense amount of funding directed towards eugenics due to the Soviet government's interest in the subject.

Yuri Filipchenko was the first professor in Russia to introduce genetics at the collegiate level due to his annual course on inheritance Petersburg University, which he started teaching in 1913.

Yuri Filipchenko was the first to publish a textbook on the subject of inheritance and genetics in Russia, which was called Nasledstvennost'.