Koltsov Nikolay - biography, facts from life, photographs, background information. Koltsov, Nikolai Konstantinovich

Nikolay Koltsov

Koltsov Nikolai Konstantinovich (07/15/08/1872, Moscow - 12/02/1940, Leningrad), Russian biologist, author of the idea of ​​matrix synthesis of hereditary molecules. Born into the family of an accountant for a large fur company. At the age of eight he entered the Moscow gymnasium, from which he graduated with a gold medal. In his youth, he collected plants, collected seeds and insects, walked throughout the Moscow province, and later throughout the Crimea. In 1890 he entered the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University, where he specialized in comparative anatomy and comparative embryology. Koltsov’s leader during this period was the head of the school of Russian zoologists M. A. Menzbier. In 1894 he took part in the IX Congress of Russian Naturalists and Doctors, where he made a report on the importance of cartilaginous centers in the development of the vertebrate pelvis, and then carried out fundamental research on the hind limb girdle and hind limbs of vertebrates, for which he was awarded a gold medal. After graduating from university (1894), Koltsov was sent abroad for two years. He worked in laboratories in Germany and at marine biological stations in Italy. The collected material served as the basis for a master's thesis, which Koltsov defended in 1901.

Even during his studies, Koltsov’s interests began to turn from comparative anatomy to cytology. In 1902, Koltsov was again sent abroad, where for two years he worked in the largest biological laboratories and at marine stations. During his second trip abroad, he completed the first part of his classic Studies on the form of the cell - A study on the sperm of decapods in connection with general considerations regarding the organization of the cell (1905), intended for his doctoral dissertation. This work, together with the second part of Studies on the shape of the cell, published in 1908, was established in science as Koltsev’s principle of shape-determining cell skeletons (cytoskeletons).

Returning to Russia in 1903, Koltsov, without stopping scientific research, began intensive pedagogical and scientific-organizational work. The course of cytology, which began back in 1899, grew into a hitherto unknown course of general biology. The second course taught by Koltsov, Systematic Zoology, was extremely popular among students.

Koltsov was an active member of the circle headed by the Bolshevik P.K. Sternberg. Soon after the suppression of the revolution, Koltsov’s doctoral dissertation was supposed to be defended, but he refused to defend it on such days behind closed doors. In 1909, for participation in political activities, Koltsov was suspended from classes, and in 1911, together with other leading teachers of Moscow University, he resigned and until 1918 he taught at the Higher Women's Courses and at the Moscow People's University Shanyavsky. In the latter, he created an excellent laboratory and trained a galaxy of famous biologists (M. M. Zavadovsky, A. S. Serebrovsky, S. N. Skadovsky, G. I. Roskin and others).

From the study of the supporting skeletal elements of the cell, Koltsov moves on to the study of contractile structures. The third part of his Studies on the shape of the cell appears - Studies on the contractility of the stalk of Zoothamnium alternans (1911), and then works on the influence of cations (1912) and hydrogen ions (1915) on physiological processes in the cell. These studies were important for establishing the so-called physiological ion series, and also attracted the attention of Russian biologists to the most important problem of the active role of the environment and marked the beginning of a whole period in the development of physicochemical biology in Russia. In 1916, for the contribution to science made by Koltsov by this time, he was elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In 1917, with funds from the Moscow Society of Scientific Institutes, the Institute of Experimental Biology was created for Koltsov, which for a long time remained the only biological research institution in the country not associated with teaching. In 1920, with the active participation of Koltsov, the Russian Eugenics Society arose, at the same time a eugenics department was organized at the Institute of Experimental Biology, which launched research on human medical genetics (the first work on the study of blood groups, the content of catalase in it, etc.), as well as on such issues of anthropogenetics as the inheritance of hair and eye color, variability and heredity of complex traits in identical twins, etc. The first medical-genetic consultation worked at the department. The Institute began the first theoretical studies in the USSR on the genetics of Drosophila.

In 1927, at the 3rd Congress of Zoologists, Anatomists and Histologists, Koltsov made a report on the Physicochemical Foundations of Morphology, in which he expanded the general biological principles Omne vinum ex ovo and Omnis cellula ex cellula, proclaiming the paradoxical principle at that time Omnis molecula ex molecula - Every molecule from a molecule. In this case, not just any molecules were meant - we were talking about those hereditary molecules on the reproduction of which, according to the idea first expressed by Koltsov, the morphophysiological continuity of the organization of living beings rests. Koltsov imagined these hereditary molecules in the form of giant protein macromolecules that make up the axial genetically active structure of chromosomes, or, in Koltsov’s terminology, the genoneme. Genetic information was imagined to be encoded not by the alternation of DNA nucleotides, but by a sequence of amino acids in a highly polymeric protein chain. Koltsov associated the transcription process with the replication of the protein part of the nucleoprotein basis of chromosomes. He was misled by the visual disappearance of thymonucleic acid in late oogenesis and in giant chromosomes.

In December 1936, a special session of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences was convened to combat bourgeois genetics. N. I. Vavilov, A. S. Serebrovsky, G. J. Möller, N. K. Koltsov, M. M. Zavadovsky, G. D. Karpechenko, G. A. Levitsky, N. P. spoke in defense of genetics. Dubinin. Against bourgeois genetics - T. D. Lysenko, N. V. Tsitsin, I. I. Present. Koltsov, not sharing Vavilov’s optimism that the edifice of genetics remained unshaken, addressed a letter to the President of VASKhNIL A.I. Muralov, where he wrote about the responsibility of all scientists for the state of science in the country. The answer was made on March 26, 1937 at the general meeting of the VASKhNIL activists, dedicated to the results of the plenum of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Muralov attacked Koltsov’s politically harmful theories on genetics and eugenics. Work on eugenics served as the main pretext for the persecution of Koltsov. On March 4, 1939, the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences considered the issue of strengthening the fight against existing pseudoscientific perversions and created a commission to familiarize itself with the work of the Koltsov Institute. Koltsov was demanded that he give in a generally accepted form... an analysis of his false teachings in... a scientific journal or, better, in all journals... having fulfilled his elementary duty to the party. But Koltsov did not do this, and he was fired from the post of director, leaving his laboratory behind him.

(1872-1940) Russian biologist, founder of Russian experimental biology

Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov was born on July 15, 1872 in Moscow in the family of an accountant for a fur company. In 1890 he graduated from the sixth Moscow gymnasium with a gold medal and in the same year he entered the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. Here he specialized in the department of comparative anatomy, and all his student works were devoted to this topic.

After graduating from the university in 1894, he was left with him to prepare for the professorship. Over the next few years, Nikolai Koltsov worked at a number of biological stations in Russia (Sevastopol, Rostov-on-Don) and abroad (Neapolitan, Rostock), where he selected materials for his master's thesis. After returning from his trips, he began to engage in scientific and pedagogical work at Moscow University (1903-1911).

Since 1903, Koltsov began research in a new field for him - cytology, studying the structure of the cell and, above all, its shape. Since most cells consist of semi-liquid cytoplasm, its shape should be determined by the presence of elastic formations inside the cell. In his numerous studies, the scientist used not only morphological, but also physiological analysis, and widely used various physical and chemical factors to change the structure and shape of cells. Thus, he built a bridge from cytology to physicochemical biology.

In 1913-1917 Nikolai Koltsov was the head of the biological laboratory at the Moscow People's University. A.L. Shanyavsky. After the October Revolution, he became the organizer and permanent director of the Institute of Experimental Biology in Moscow (1917-1939).

Having started to organize the Institute of Experimental Biology, Koltsov set a truly grandiose task for the staff of the scientific institution - to study the phenomena of life from a variety of points of view, using the methods of genetics, cytology, physical and chemical biology, developmental physiology and experimental embryology, and evolutionary teaching. In the implementation of the planned program, the personal contribution of Koltsov himself is very large, reflected in many (over 300) experimental studies, articles, reports, and books. From the very beginning of the institute's activities, Nikolai Koltsov paid special attention to issues of genetics and launched extensive research on a number of objects. The scientist passionately argued for the need for the development of genetics and, in particular, an in-depth study of mutations.

He already assumed then that among non-viable, unfavorable and simply indifferent mutations, mutations useful to humans could also arise, which would attract the attention of geneticists and breeders. The outstanding biologist understood that some very strong methods of influencing cells would be needed to get to the chromosomes and genes safely hidden deep in the cells, and he developed these methods.

Genetics in Russia was just emerging; the young science did not have specialists. It took time to train personnel and awaken interest in this science among experimenters. Since 1918, Professor Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov began giving lectures to students at Moscow University. Chetverikov works with him at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, who teaches a course in genetics. Koltsov’s first students: B.A. Astaurov, N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky, D.D. Romashev, N.P. Dubinin - after graduating from university they come to work at his institute. In 1918, Koltsov and S.S. Chetverikov organized an experimental station near Zvenigorod, which became a center for the study of animal genetics. Here the first attempts were made to induce mutations in Drosophila by the action of X-rays, but the experiments gave very uncertain results. Unfortunately, in the first years of the revolution, Russian scientists were isolated from communication with scientists from other countries.

Koltsov knew about the mutations of fruit flies, which were thoroughly studied at that time by the Morgan school, only from printed articles. The scientist was also the initiator of work on chemical mutagenesis, which was crowned with complete success in the work of his student V.V. Sakharov. Back in 1932, Nikolai Koltsov pointed out the possibility of experimentally doubling the number of chromosomes and the practical significance of this method, which has already been implemented in our time in obtaining new varieties of agricultural plants.

The flights of the first Soviet stratospheric balloons attracted the attention of Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov, and the opportunity arose to use cosmic factors that could influence hereditary properties, namely cosmic rays. Finally, the scientist’s most important contribution to science is the development of the concept of chromosomes as hereditary molecules (1927). A chromosome, according to Koltsov, is a single giant molecule. It consists of two threads - genomemes, each of which consists of individual genes, like radicals of this molecule. New genonemes are created only on old ones as on matrices. The matrix principle of the formation of new chromosomal molecules put forward by Nikolai Koltsov turned out to be truly prophetic. He anticipated by many years the most important position of modern molecular biology. Koltsov considered high-polymer protein molecules to be the hereditary matrix. Later it turned out that the leading role in heredity belongs to simpler compounds - nucleic acids. In a number of articles, such as “Genetics and physiology of development”, “The role of the gene in the physiology of development”, Koltsov developed ideas that were far ahead of his time.

The outstanding scientist sought to build bridges between developmental physiology and genetics, as well as cytology and biochemistry, carefully analyzed the individual stages of individual development, starting with egg fertilization, and also considered the developing organism as a complex system. Subsequently, he examined questions about the influence of individual genes, which are gradually included in the process of individual development, about the connection between genes, hormones and formative substances discovered in the experiments of experimental embryologists. Koltsov was close to the position that appeared many years later: one gene - one enzyme.

Being a general biologist, the outstanding scientist paid a lot of attention to such issues as the general characteristics of the properties of life and the difference between living and nonliving things, and was a staunch supporter of the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin. As is known, modern teaching is a synthesis of classical Darwinism and data from genetics, cytology and other experimental sciences of the 20th century. The ideas of Nikolai Koltsov contributed to this synthesis. Its role is great in training scientific workers, many of whom later became prominent scientists. Finally, he was the initiator of the creation of the first biological journals in Russia ("Advances of Modern Biology", "Biological Journal" and others), a member of the editorial board of many other scientific and popular science journals, as well as the editor of the biological sections of the encyclopedias - the Great Medical and the Great Soviet. For almost 20 years, Koltsov headed the main natural science journal Priroda.

Stalin's “purge” did not bypass biology either. Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov was expelled from the institute that he created, and, thrown out of the boundaries of science, he immediately died without surviving a heart attack. The scientist died on December 2, 1940 and was buried in Moscow at the Lefortovo cemetery. In May 1975, the name of Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov was given to the Institute of Developmental Biology of the Academy of Sciences, organized in 1967 by Koltsov’s student, Boris Lvovich Astaurov, both historically and ideologically associated with the Institute of Experimental Biology.

N.K. Koltsov in 1922. Portrait by sculptor N.A. Andreeva.
(Photo by E.V. Ramensky)

In 2003, the world will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of J. Watson and F. Crick's article on the structure of DNA. However, the hypothesis about the matrix organization of the “substance of heredity” is the largest biological idea of ​​the 20th century. She was born not in the USA and Great Britain, but in Russia. More precisely, in the Soviet Union. Its author was Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov. However, in the USSR the name of one of the greatest biologists of the 20th century. was erased from the history of science for many years.

One hundred and twenty years ago, F. Dostoevsky complained that Russia did not yet have a science equal to its famous literature. But by that time our country had already become a powerful stronghold of Darwinism. By the end of the nineteenth century. Russian biology has already counted more than one major discovery. These were the works of I. Mechnikov, I. Sechenov and I. Pavlov, the discovery of double fertilization in flowering plants by S. Navashin, chemosynthesis by S. Vinogradsky, viruses by D. Ivanovsky, the invention of the chromatography method by the botanist M. Tsvet, K. Merezhkovsky’s hypothesis about the origin of cellular organelles from symbiont bacteria and much more. Russia became the birthplace of a new science - soil science (V. Dokuchaev). At the very beginning of the twentieth century. among the first laureates of the newly established Nobel Prize were already Pavlov and Mechnikov.

When Dostoevsky was publishing “A Writer’s Diary,” Kolya Koltsov had just entered the gymnasium. He was born in 1872 in Moscow into a family with average income and strong moral foundations. Lost his father early. His mother, a merchant's daughter, was an educated woman, and his maternal grandfather was known as a famous polyglot. The Russian merchants were by no means represented only by the “Tit Titychs Wild”. Among the merchants there were a sufficient number of smart, educated people who generously donated to charity, to support education, science and art.

Nikolai Koltsov taught himself to read at the age of 4, was interested in plants and animals, and, after graduating from high school, in 1890 he entered the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. There his teacher was a zoologist, Professor M. Menzbier. Koltsov, while still a student, received a gold medal for his work on the development of the girdle of the hind limbs of vertebrates.

After completing a university course in Moscow, Koltsov spent 1896–1897. at foreign universities and at hydrobiological (then called zoological) stations near the warm seas in France and Italy. He prepared his master's thesis (which he defended in 1901) on the development of the lamprey's head. The opportunity to work with living objects, personal communication with famous scientists from Europe and America, friendship and disputes with young researchers - all this led to a sharp turn in Koltsov’s scientific interests. From comparative anatomy he moves on to the study of the cell, defining this direction as “substance and form”, and in his last, unfinished work (late 1940) – as “chemistry and morphology”. Koltsov was convinced: it was necessary to create a new, holistic picture of biology, relying on the achievements of chemistry, physics and mathematics. The scientist asks the question: “Has our generation put forward an idea that is not inferior to Darwin’s?” Both he and his students largely succeeded in defining the face of biological science in the 20th century. It remains for the present century.

Koltsov’s first publication in a new direction: “On the shape-determining elastic formations in cells” (1903), was carried out on the sperm of decapod crustaceans Inachus scorpio. He developed this direction on various objects in a large work, published in several parts, “Research on the Form of Cells” (1905–1929). This work included morphological, physiological and biophysical directions. I had never before encountered in works about Koltsov the realization that he was the first in the world to show the existence of the cytoskeleton as a special structure. Only in the 60–70s. XX century Using an electron microscope, they were able to identify the types of cytoskeletal proteins that form microtubules, microfilaments and intermediate filaments, which determine the shape of cells and their motility. Now no one remembers Koltsov, although his foreign colleagues before the First World War called these ideas “Koltsov’s principle of cell organization,” and this principle was included in textbooks, monographs and lecture courses. And in Russia, a scientist who was formally only a master’s degree was “disgraced” because of his political views and participation in the 1905 revolution; for these works in the 1910s. was nominated for nomination as a full member of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. The condition was Koltsov’s move to the capital and occupation of the department created “for him.” But the scientist refused to leave Moscow, where his school of experimental biologists had already developed, and became “just” a corresponding member (i.e., a nonresident member) of the Academy of Sciences.

Diagram of a chromosome before cell division, according to Koltsov. Four identical (2+2) polymer molecules are visible - genonemes

Koltsov was the first to realize and clearly express that the infinite variety of biological forms appears to be based on a limited set of macromolecules. For years he worked towards the idea of ​​matrix reproduction of hereditary molecules. Koltsov understood that hereditary structures are stable and linear. They have vector properties (in modern terms - a strictly defined sequence of alternation of monomers in a polymer molecule). In his lectures in 1903, a scheme for the crossing of chromosomes with subsequent gene exchange was already predicted - what was later called crossing over and was included in textbooks as the most important pattern of transmission of genetic information.

Seventy-five years ago, in December 1927, at the III All-Union Congress of Zoologists, Anatomists and Histologists in Leningrad, the idea of ​​matrix reproduction was made public for the first time. In 1928, she also appeared in the magazine Biologisches Zentralblatt. It contained such main provisions as the concept of giant polymer molecules and the matrix method of doubling them. Small nuclear sap molecules assemble complementarily on an existing template and are then “stitched” into a polymeric protein molecule, a copy of the template. At that time, nothing was known about nucleic acids as polymers. It is important that the same double helix that would be discovered in 1953 by Watson and Crick was being drawn. Genes, according to Koltsov, constitute autonomous parts of this molecule. They are represented by different side radicals of a monotonous giant chain, which Koltsov, an excellent teacher, briefly and biologically called genoneme- a thread of genes. The term is incomparably better than the modern one - “deoxyribonucleic acid macromolecule”. A constant, conservative inherited matrix is ​​not destroyed and does not arise anew, it passes from parents to descendants. Of course, the scientist believed, it is capable of undergoing abrupt changes and mutating. The mutation can be caused, for example, by the alkylation reaction of the side radical, i.e. replacing hydrogen with methyl (–CH3). 20 years later, Koltsov’s student I. Rapoport will demonstrate the super-mutagenic properties of alkylating agents. But even world science in the 50s did not suspect the alkylation of nucleic acids and methylase enzymes, and Koltsov, almost 35 years before their discovery, had already foreseen this reaction in his hypothesis! It can be considered that the development of molecular biology began with his speech in 1927. Or maybe it would be more correct to consider 1903 as the year of her birth, when the scientist showed the existence in cells of an internal protein skeleton that is variable, depending on environmental conditions?

The history of the study of hereditary molecules continued in Germany, where in 1925 Koltsova’s employee N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky was sent to “teach the Germans” genetics. And this despite the fact that in 1913, at the First International Genetic Congress, Russia was represented by one geneticist - Finn Federley. Twelve years later, our country has already become, along with the United States, a powerful center of world genetics. In 1935 N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky with German physicist co-authors, K.G. Zimmer and M. Delbrück, created a target theory, and, using reverse X-ray mutations in Drosophila, were able to estimate the physical, molecular dimensions of the gene. But there was still no data on the chemical nature of the genes. The development of the idea continued after World War II. Several names should be mentioned: E. Chargaff, who used the chromatographic method of M. Tsvet to analyze the four nitrogenous bases in nucleic acids, Rosalind Franklin, who was the first to obtain an X-ray diffraction pattern of a DNA crystal, as well as our former compatriot, physicist Georgiy Gamow, who did a lot in the USA to decipher the coding method proteins in the structure of nucleic acids. But the main prize, the Nobel Prize, for these many years of work was “thwarted” in 1962 by D. Watson, F. Crick and M. Wilkinson, the leader of Franklin, who died early. But in our country, the Lysenkoites cursed the concept of “gene,” and biologists could only joke darkly: “guess an indecent three-letter word.”

The golden age of Russian biology, which began in the 19th century, continued into the 20s. XX century It was a time of remarkable discoveries: homological series and centers of origin of cultivated plants by N. Vavilov, nomogenesis by L. Berg, the work of I. Pavlov, V. Vernadsky, A. Chizhevsky, microbiologists G. Nadson, V. Omelyansky, ecologist V. Sukachev and many others.

It is difficult, sometimes impossible, to separate what Koltsov created from what his students did. Architect K. Melnikov defined creativity as “it’s mine.” This was not the case with Koltsov. And yet it is clear that many years of research on the shape and mobility of cells (cytoskeleton) and the matrix hypothesis are his and only his achievements. And besides, there was brilliant teaching at the Moscow and People's (Shanyavsky) universities, as well as at the Higher Women's (Bestuzhev) courses. Until the end of his days, his students remembered how the professor read his lectures (he prepared them anew every year), how under Koltsov’s hands images of organisms, cells and structures created with the help of colored crayons appeared, as if alive. He established departments, laboratories, experimental stations, several journals, scientific societies and, of course, the Institute of Experimental Biology (IEB).

The building on Vorontsovo Pole, 6, where the Institute of Experimental Biology was located for 30 years (since 1925). (Photo by E.V. Ramensky)

IEB was created in 1917 with money from the publisher and philanthropist A.F. Marx on Sivtsev Vrazhek, 41. At first, he had 3 employees on his staff. His main task was to spread genetics in Russia.

In 1925, thanks to the support of N. Semashko and M. Gorky, the IEB received a new building and new staff. And although, in comparison with the St. Petersburg institutes of those years - the All-Union Institute of Plant Growing N.I. Vavilov and Koltushami I.P. Pavlov - Koltsov’s institute was small, the famous German biologist R. Goldschmidt called Koltsov’s brainchild “brilliant”.

One of the most important directions of this institution was education - dissemination in our country, incl. among agronomists, veterinarians, doctors, ideas of modern biology.

The merits of Koltsov and his students in the fight against Lysenko’s pseudoscience are enormous. In 1938, Lysenko's offensive against the IEB began. N.K. Koltsov was removed from the post of director, but, having taken the blow upon himself, he managed to preserve his favorite brainchild - the Institute.

The Koltsov Institute can be likened to a choir, the conductor of which ensures that every unique voice can be heard. The teacher determined the direction of the throw and often made the first powerful jerk himself, then passing the baton to the students. The formulation of the tasks was distinguished by its novelty and unprecedented breadth of coverage. But Koltsov refused to put his name on his collaborators’ publications, although it was often he who conceived, thought through and finalized their work.

Back in 1916, Koltsov included experimental research into the evolution of organisms—modeling speciation—in the future directions of work of the IEB. He planned to test the effect of strong physical and chemical factors. First of all, X-ray radiation was tested (in the experiments of D. Romashov and N. Timofeev-Resovsky). In Russia at that time there were no genetically verified lines of Drosophila with certain signaling genes. There was a civil war going on. We were hungry, there was no firewood or our own X-ray machine. The Koltsovites received positive results, but, insuring themselves against Lamarckian errors, did not make their data public. In 1922, J. Möller arrived from the USA, the first to break through the scientific blockade of the USSR. He brought standard lines Drosophila melanogaster from New York and plunged into the idea-rich, open environment of the Koltso circle. Returning to the USA, he quickly did a paper on mutations in Drosophila under the influence of X-rays and published it in 1927, beating the Moscow Koltsovo team and Timofeev-Resovsky, who was establishing work in Germany. For this work in 1946 Möller received his Nobel Prize. I have never heard or read any reproaches about this from Koltsovo residents. Soviet geneticists loved Möller, he spent more than one year here, but the facts are stubborn.

But the Koltsevites did not relinquish their primacy in the study of mutations under the influence of chemical compounds - starting with the work of V.V. Sakharov in 1932, and, mainly, thanks to the brilliant completion in the classical works of I.A. Rapoport, awarded the Lenin Prize in 1984.

How does species formation occur in natural conditions? The theory of speciation was also created within the walls of the IEB - by the group of S. Chetverikov. Natural populations of Drosophila from the Caucasus to Germany were examined - and the facts obtained allowed us to say that new species arise due to spontaneous mutations that accumulate in any population. Population genetics made it possible to bridge the gap between the laboratory science of genetics and evolutionary theory, built by Darwin only on data on macroevolution, i.e. on the study of fossil remains of organisms of past eras.

In the 30s, the Koltsovo team (A. Serebrovsky, N. Dubinin) were the first in the world to discover the complexity of gene structure. The IEB began work on human congenital diseases. In addition to genetics and cytogenetics, they successfully studied cell structure, developmental biology, sex regulation, hormone therapy, zoopsychology, the biological effect of cosmic rays (with the help of stratospheric balloons), and were engaged in scientific microcinematography...

Koltsov saw decades ahead. From him you can read about the great future of X-ray diffraction analysis of the structure of biomolecules, find a prediction of protein synthesis in vitro using appropriate seed matrices, foresee the decisive role of genomics in constructing the natural phylogenetic tree of organisms...

Koltsov and his scientific descendants greatly influenced the fields of applied research in the USSR, from the creation of therapeutic drugs (the anticancer crucin and a whole range of producers of various antibiotics for the pharmaceutical industry) to ecology, soil science and pedagogy. From productive varieties and breeds for agriculture to medical (genetic) counseling, which grew out of the ideas of eugenics, the passion for which Koltsov was blamed for even many years after his death. At the Koltsov Institute, the now living G.V. Lopashov performed nuclear transplantation back in the 1940s - a micro-operation on which the cloning of organisms is based. The Lysenkoites banned the publication of this work! In 2000, the international Human Genome Project was recognized as the highest scientific achievement. Isn't this a triumph of Koltsov's ideas?

Among Koltsov’s students there are hundreds of famous researchers, academicians and laureates. Among them were those nominated for the Nobel Prize: N. Timofeev-Resovsky (1950) and I. Rapoport (1962). Foreign “Nobel laureates” are also indebted to Koltsov’s genius: J. Möller (1946), M. Delbrück, Timofeev’s German student (1969), and Delbrück’s student J. Watson (1962). It is significant that after the trampling down of Soviet biology in 1948, it was Koltsov’s scientific descendants who managed to rise to the world level: in chemical mutagenesis - I. Rapoport, in the regulation of sex - B. Astaurov and V. Strunnikov, in new areas of molecular genetics and “jumping genes” » – R. Khesin, G. Georgiev and V. Gvozdev.

The matrix hypothesis, experimental mutagenesis and population genetics - this is the classic, main contribution to biology by Koltsov and his students. According to N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky, this triad is the second, after Darwinian selection, general fundamental natural-historical principle. The synthetic theory of evolution—Darwinism of the 20th century—rests on it.

“A thought not inferior to Darwin’s” was put forward and experimentally proven by Koltsov, over the years it was universally recognized and largely determined the face of twentieth-century biology.

KOLTSOV, NIKOLAY KONSTANTINOVICH(1872–1940), Russian biologist, author of the idea of ​​matrix synthesis of “hereditary molecules”. Born on July 15 (8), 1872 in Moscow in the family of an accountant for a large fur company. At the age of eight he entered the Moscow gymnasium, from which he graduated with a gold medal. In his youth, he collected plants, collected seeds and insects, walked throughout the Moscow province, and later throughout the Crimea. In 1890 he entered the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University, where he specialized in comparative anatomy and comparative embryology. Koltsov’s leader during this period was the head of the school of Russian zoologists M.A. Menzbir. In 1894 he took part in the IX Congress of Russian Naturalists and Doctors, where he made a report The importance of cartilaginous centers in the development of the vertebrate pelvis, and then performed basic research Hind limb girdle and hind limbs of vertebrates, for which he was awarded a gold medal.

After graduating from the university (1894), Koltsov was left there to prepare for a professorship, and after three years of studies and successfully passing six master's exams, he was sent abroad for two years. He worked in laboratories in Germany and at marine biological stations in Italy. The collected material served as the basis for a master's thesis, which Koltsov defended in 1901.

Even during his studies, Koltsov's interests began to turn from comparative anatomy to cytology. Having received the right to a privatdocent course after returning from a business trip abroad, he begins to lecture precisely on this subject. In 1902, Koltsov was again sent abroad, where for two years he worked in the largest biological laboratories and at marine stations. These years coincided with a period when in biology there was a decline in interest in purely descriptive morphological sciences and new trends began to emerge - experimental cytology, biological chemistry, developmental mechanics, genetics, which opened up completely new approaches to understanding the organic world. Koltsov’s communication with the largest cytologists in Europe (W. Fleming, O. Büchli), as well as with R. Goldschmidt and M. Hartmann, finally confirmed his decision to “move from the study of morphology on dead preparations to the study of life processes on living objects.” While on his second trip abroad, he performed the first part of his classical Research on cell shape – A study on the sperm of decapods in connection with general considerations regarding cell organization(1905), intended for a doctoral dissertation. This work together with the second part Research on cell shape, published in 1908, was established in science as the “Koltsov principle” of shape-determining cellular skeletons (cytoskeletons).

Returning to Russia in 1903, Koltsov, without stopping scientific research, began intensive pedagogical and scientific-organizational work. The course of cytology, which began back in 1899, grew into a hitherto unknown course of general biology. The second course taught by Koltsov, “Systematic Zoology,” was extremely popular among students. The “Big Zoological Workshop” created by Koltsov, where students were accepted by competition, formed a single whole with the lectures.

Koltsov was an active member of the circle headed by the Bolshevik P.K. Sternberg. During the days of the 1905 revolution, the center of the circle’s work was moved from the observatory where Sternberg worked to Koltsov’s office. Collective protests and petitions were drawn up here, appeals from the student committee were printed on an underground mimeograph, and leaflets were stored. Koltsov’s state of mind during this period is best characterized by his book In memory of the fallen. Victims from among Moscow students in October and December days(1906). Published on the opening day of the first Duma, the book was confiscated on the same day, but more than half of the circulation had already been sold out. Soon after the suppression of the revolution, Koltsov’s doctoral dissertation was supposed to be defended, but he refused to defend it “on such days behind closed doors.” In 1909, for participation in political activities, Koltsov was suspended from classes, and in 1911, together with other leading teachers of Moscow University, he resigned and until 1918 he taught at the Higher Women's Courses and at the Moscow People's University Shanyavsky. In the latter, he created an excellent laboratory and trained a galaxy of famous biologists (M.M. Zavadovsky, A.S. Serebrovsky, S.N. Skadovsky, G.I. Roskin, etc.).

From the study of the supporting skeletal elements of the cell, Koltsov moves on to the study of contractile structures. The third part of it appears Research on cell shape – Studies on the contractility of the stalk of Zoothamnium alternans(1911), and then works on the influence of cations (1912) and hydrogen ions (1915) on physiological processes in the cell. These studies were important for establishing the so-called physiological ion series, and also attracted the attention of Russian biologists to the most important problem of the active role of the environment and marked the beginning of a whole period in the development of physicochemical biology in Russia. In 1916, for the contribution to science made by Koltsov by this time, he was elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In 1917, with funds from the Moscow Society of Scientific Institutes, the Institute of Experimental Biology was created for Koltsov, which for a long time remained the only biological research institution in the country not associated with teaching. Here Koltsov had the opportunity to “combine a number of the latest trends in modern experimental biology in order to study certain problems from different points of view and, if possible, using different methods.” We talked about developmental physiology, genetics, biochemistry and cytology. The scientific team of the Institute initially consisted of Koltsov’s students, and then was replenished with prominent biologists from other scientific schools. At different times, A.S. Serebrovsky, N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky, S.S. Chetverikov, G.V. Epstein, N.P. Dubinin, G.V. Lopashov, I.A. Rapoport, P F. Rokitsky, B. N. Sidorov, V. P. Efroimson and others. In the post-revolutionary years, many employees worked for free or shared one rate between two. In 1920, with the active participation of Koltsov, the Russian Eugenics Society arose, at the same time a eugenics department was organized at the Institute of Experimental Biology, which launched research on human medical genetics (the first work on the study of blood groups, the content of catalase in it, etc.), as well as on such issues of anthropogenetics as the inheritance of hair and eye color, variability and heredity of complex traits in identical twins, etc. The department had its first medical genetic consultation. The Institute began the first theoretical studies in the USSR on the genetics of Drosophila.

In 1927, at the 3rd Congress of Zoologists, Anatomists and Histologists, Koltsov made a report Physico-chemical basis of morphology, in which he expanded the general biological principles “Omne vinum ex ovo” and “Omnis cellula ex cellula”, proclaiming the paradoxical principle at that time “Omnis molecule ex molecule” - “Every molecule from a molecule.” In this case, not just any molecules were meant - we were talking about those “hereditary molecules”, on the reproduction of which, according to the idea first expressed by Koltsov, the morphophysiological continuity of the organization of living beings rests. Koltsov imagined these “hereditary molecules” in the form of giant protein macromolecules that make up the axial genetically active structure of the chromosomes, or, in Koltsov’s terminology, the genoneme. Genetic information was represented as encoded not by the alternation of DNA nucleotides, but by a sequence of amino acids in a highly polymeric protein chain. Koltsov associated the transcription process with the replication of the protein part of the nucleoprotein basis of chromosomes. He was misled by the visual disappearance of thymonucleic acid (i.e. DNA) in late oogenesis and in giant chromosomes.

In December 1936, a special session of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences was convened to combat “bourgeois genetics.” N.I. Vavilov, A.S. Serebrovsky, G.J. Möller, N.K. Koltsov, M.M. Zavadovsky, G.D. Karpechenko, G.A. Levitsky, N.P. spoke in defense of genetics. Dubinin. Against “bourgeois genetics” - T.D. Lysenko, N.V. Tsitsin, I.I. Present. Koltsov, not sharing Vavilov’s optimism that “the building of genetics remained unshaken,” addressed a letter to the President of VASKhNIL A.I. Muralov, where he wrote about the responsibility of all scientists for the state of science in the country. The answer was made on March 26, 1937 at the general meeting of the VASKhNIL activists, dedicated to the results of the plenum of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Muralov attacked Koltsov’s “politically harmful” theories on genetics and eugenics. Work on eugenics served as the main pretext for the persecution of Koltsov. On March 4, 1939, the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences considered the issue “On strengthening the fight against existing pseudoscientific perversions” and created a commission to familiarize itself with the work of the Koltsov Institute. Koltsov was demanded that in a “generally accepted form” he “give... an analysis of his false teachings in... a scientific journal or, better yet, in all journals... having fulfilled his elementary duty to the party.” But Koltsov did not do this, and he was fired from his post as director.

The scientist’s archive contains many unfinished works. First of all, this is part four Research on cell shape, on which Koltsov worked intermittently for 20 years and which is devoted to experimental studies of the physicochemical foundations of morpho-physiological phenomena that are observed in the cells of effector organs. The keynote speech “Chemistry and Morphology”, dedicated to a new interpretation of cellular structures in their statics and dynamics, remained unfinished.

In 1976, the Institute of Developmental Biology of the USSR Academy of Sciences was named after Koltsov.

Founder of Russian experimental biology. He was the first to develop a hypothesis of the molecular structure and matrix reproduction of chromosomes, which anticipated the fundamental principles of modern molecular biology and genetics.

In 1890 he entered Moscow University, from which he graduated in 1894 with a 1st degree diploma and a gold medal for the essay “The Belt of the Hind Limbs of Vertebrates.” At the university, Koltsov specialized under Professor M.A. Menzbir. The early deceased private associate professor and later professor of embryology and histology V.N. Lvov had a strong influence on the scientific development and interests of Koltsov. As Koltsov himself wrote, it was Lvov who gave him, then still a second-year student, the work of A. Weisman “On the Rudimentary Path” to read. From Professor N.A. Ivantsov, who taught evolutionary studies and cytology, Koltsov received an interest in cytology. Although Koltsov's interests at the university were focused on issues of comparative anatomy, he read and studied the books of Lamarck and Darwin, Weismann and Gegenbaur, Schopenhauer and Kant, Buckle and Spinoza. While still a student, he completed the work “Development of the Pelvis in a Frog” and in 1894 reported on it at a sectional meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Naturalists and Doctors. the summary of this report became Koltsov's first published work. In his third year, M.A. Menzbir suggested that he write an essay for the gold medal, “The Belt of the Hind Limbs and the Hind Limbs of Vertebrates.” Koltsov completed this task: he read about 50 literary sources in different languages ​​(even in his high school years he studied English, German, French, and later Italian), and hand-wrote a book in encyclopedia format with a volume of about 700 pages, with a large number of artistically executed pen drawings. The original of this unpublished work is stored in the library of the Institute of Developmental Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. While studying at the university, he traveled a lot to various places in Russia, from the outskirts of Moscow to the Crimea and the Caucasus.

After graduating from the university in 1894, he was left to prepare for the professorship. After passing his master's exams in 1896, Koltsov went abroad (1897-1898) to work in W. Flemming's laboratory in Kiel and at biological stations in Naples, Roscov and Villafranca. Communication with scientists from different countries played a big role in Koltsov’s future development as a researcher, in his departure from the purely comparative anatomical interests that prevailed in his student years, and ultimately led him to the formulation and study of fundamental general biological problems.

In 1900, he became a private assistant professor at Moscow University and in October 1901, having defended his master's thesis "Development of the head of the lamprey", he was approved as a master of zoology. After returning from a new two-year business trip (1902-1903), Koltsov began his duties as a private assistant professor at the university in the department of comparative anatomy, conducting classes with students in histology and microscopic zoology. During this period, he began a cycle of research in a new field - cytology. In 1936, a collection of experimental studies, “Organization of the Cell,” was published, summarizing this work.

In the revolutionary days of 1905, N.K. Koltsov joined the circle of “eleven hot heads,” led by astronomer P.K. Sternberg. The suppression of revolutionary events directly affected the official position of N.K. Koltsov. A conflict began with M.A. Menzbir. N.K. Koltsov was unable to defend his doctoral dissertation on the structure of sperm cells in decapods and the role of formations that determine the shape of cells. “I refused to defend my dissertation on such days behind closed doors: the students were on strike, and I decided that I did not need a doctorate. Later, with my speeches during the revolutionary months, I completely upset my relationship with the official professorship, and the thought of defending my dissertation no longer came in my head." At the beginning of the 1906/07 school year. Mr. Menzbier suggested that Koltsov vacate the office he occupied, removed him from managing the library, and in the spring of 1907 he also took away the work room. Koltsov converted his personal apartment into a laboratory. In the 1909/10 school year. Mr. Menzbier suspended Koltsov from conducting practical classes at the Institute of Comparative Zoology. Koltsov was left with only lecturing on the course of invertebrate zoology, which he read in 1904. In 1903, he began teaching as a professor at the Higher Women's Courses until 1918, when they were transformed into the Second Moscow University and continued teaching as a professor at the Second Moscow University until 1924. At the same time (1903-1919) Koltsov taught classes at the City People's University named after. A.L. Shanyavsky.

While teaching at the Higher Women's Courses, Koltsov continued to be interested in university affairs. He published a brochure “On the University Question” (in 1909 and 1910), in which he criticized the order prevailing in universities. At the beginning of 1911, the new Minister of Public Education, Casso, stripped the university of its last vestiges of autonomy. In protest, a large group of professors and teachers (Timiryazev, Chaplygin, Lebedev, Vernadsky, etc.) resigned, among them was Koltsov.

Beginning his work during the heyday of descriptive biology and the first steps of experimental biology, Koltsov had a keen sense of the trends in the development of biology and early realized the importance of the experimental method. He preached the need for an experimental approach in all areas of biology and predicted its use even in evolutionary teaching (without opposing experimental methods to descriptive ones). This was not a simple biological experiment, but the use of methods of physics and chemistry. Koltsov more than once emphasized the enormous importance for biology of the discovery of new forms of radiant energy, in particular X-rays and cosmic rays, and wrote about the use of radioactive substances. To study the organism as a whole, it is necessary to use all modern knowledge in the field of physical and colloidal chemistry; it is necessary to study monomolecular layers inside the cell and their role in various transformations of substances. “Biologists are waiting for these methods (X-ray diffraction analysis) to be improved so much that it will be possible to use them to study the crystal structure of intracellular skeletal, solid structures of protein and other nature.” This idea was prophetic and was actually realized in the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule using X-ray diffraction analysis. Koltsov’s other idea, in which he also went from biology to chemistry, also turned out to be prophetic. Based on the idea he developed that each complex biological molecule arises from a similar existing molecule, he predicted that chemists would take the path of creating new molecules in solutions containing the necessary components of complex molecules, by introducing seeds of ready-made molecules of the same structure into them . He wrote: “I think that only in this way will it be possible to synthesize proteins in vitro, and not just any proteins, but certain ones, that is, the synthesis of which is planned in advance.” Koltsova did not give up the idea of ​​​​organizing a new scientific institution - the Institute of Experimental Biology.

In 1916 he was elected corresponding member of the RAS. In the same year, the Society of the Moscow Scientific Institute was created, which outlined the organization of several scientific institutions, including experimental biology. In 1917, the institute was created and N.K. Koltsov became its first director (in 1967, having undergone various renamings, the institute was divided into the Institute of Developmental Biology and the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Evolutionary Morphology and Animal Ecology). During the period from 1917 to 1940, the institute became a true center for the creation of a number of new fields of biology and approaches for synthesis between them.

N.K. Koltsov was constantly in the field of view on genetic issues. Back in 1921, he published an experimental work “Genetic analysis of color in guinea pigs.” Genetic studies were carried out on Drosophila. In these works, the scientist saw the establishment of the most important connection between genetics and evolutionary teaching. Later, work began on chemical mutagenesis.

N.K. Koltsov deeply understood the importance of genetics for animal husbandry practice. In 1918, he organized the Anikov genetic station, specializing in the genetics of farm animals. Somewhat later, another poultry farming station was organized in the Tula region. At the beginning of 1920, both stations merged into one. In 1925, the station received the name Central Station for the Genetics of Farm Animals, the director of which was Koltsov and his students over the years. Koltsov’s enormous merit is that he attracted many talented people to work at the station, later known as the creators of entire trends in genetics and selection of certain types of farm animals.

After the revolution in 1918, N.K. Koltsov returned to Moscow University (which became known as the First) and taught as a professor until 1930, heading the department of experimental biology. Returning from a business trip abroad in 1930, he learned that during this time the courses he taught had been abolished. But on the basis of his department, 5 departments arose, headed by his students: physiology, histology, genetics, development dynamics, hydrobiology.

In 1927, a meeting of the Commission for the Study of Natural Productive Forces of Russia (KEPS) of the Academy of Sciences was held, at which a decision was made on the need to create the All-Union Institute of Livestock Husbandry. The Institute was opened in 1930 and the Central Genetic Station joined its structure as the selection genetics sector; N.K. Koltsov became the first head of the sector. In 1935, he was elected academician of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences and awarded the degree of Doctor of Zoology.

The last years of the scientist’s life were overshadowed by attacks on some fundamental principles of modern biology and a number of its fields, such as genetics, cytology, etc. They began to deny the role of chromosomes in heredity, those chromosomes to the study of which N.K. Koltsov devoted a significant part of his scientific activity. Being the largest figure in the field of genetics and cytology, N.K. Koltsov, along with N.I. Vavilov, bore the brunt of the blow of the wave of antigenetic and anti-Darwinian dogmatism. In 1938, N.K. Koltsov resigned as head of the Institute of Experimental Biology, to which he devoted 22 years of his life.

Since 1972, the Academy of Sciences began to hold regular Koltsov readings. The Institute of Developmental Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences was named after N.K. Koltsov.