Yuri Aleksandrovich Filipchenko, sometimes Philipchenko (; 1882 — 1930) was a

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

entomologist Entomology (from Ancient Greek ἔντομον (''éntomon''), meaning "insect", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study") is the branch of zoology that focuses on insects. Those who study entomology are known as entomologists. In ...

who coined the terms ''

microevolution Microevolution is the change in allele frequencies that occurs over time within a population. This change is due to four different processes: mutation, selection ( natural and artificial), gene flow and genetic drift. This change happens over ...

'' and ''

macroevolution Macroevolution comprises the evolutionary processes and patterns which occur at and above the species level. In contrast, microevolution is evolution occurring within the population(s) of a single species. In other words, microevolution is the ...

,'' as well as the mentor of geneticist

Theodosius Dobzhansky Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky (; ; January 25, 1900 – December 18, 1975) was a Russian-born American geneticist and evolutionary biologist. He was a central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the modern ...

. Though he himself was an orthogeneticist, he was one of the first scientists to incorporate the laws of Mendel into evolutionary theory and thus had a great influence on

The Modern Synthesis ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...

. He established a

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinians, Augustinian ...

laboratory in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

undertaking experimental work with ''

Drosophila melanogaster ''Drosophila melanogaster'' is a species of fly (an insect of the Order (biology), order Diptera) in the family Drosophilidae. The species is often referred to as the fruit fly or lesser fruit fly, or less commonly the "vinegar fly", "pomace fly" ...

''. Theodosius Dobzhansky worked with him from 1924. Filipchenko is also known for his work in Soviet

eugenics Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fer ...

, though his work in the subject would later result in his public denunciation due to the rise of

Stalinism Stalinism (, ) is the Totalitarianism, totalitarian means of governing and Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953), 1927 to 1953 by dictator Jose ...

and increased criticisms that eugenics represented bourgeois science.

Biography

Early life and education

Yuri Filipchenko was born on February 13, 1882, in Zlyn' in

Bolkhovsky District Bolkhovsky District () is an administrativeLaw #522-OZ and municipalLaw #464-OZ district (raion), one of the twenty-four in Oryol Oblast, Russia. It is located in the north of the oblast. The area of the district is . Its administrative center is ...

of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

. His father was Aleksandrovich Efimovich, a landowner and agriculturalist. Filipchenko also had a brother by the name of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, who would later become a parasitologist and physician."Filipchenko hiliptschenko Iurii Aleksandrovich." In ''Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography'', 297-303. Vol. 17. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. ''Gale Virtual Reference Library'' He received his secondary education at the Second Saint Petersburg Classical Gymnasium. In 1897, Filipchenko read Darwin’s ''

On the Origin of Species ''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life'')The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by M ...

'' and ''Sexual Selection'' for the first time. Two years later, he would read

Carl Nägeli Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli (26 or 27 March 1817 – 10 May 1891) was a Swiss botanist. He studied cell division and pollination but became known as the man who discouraged Gregor Mendel from further work on genetics. He rejected natural selecti ...

’s ''Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstamungslehre''. These two works would later have a powerful formative influence on Filipchenko and helped to steer him towards a career in zoology. 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, Filipchenko soon transferred to the natural science division at

Saint Petersburg State University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBGU; ) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the university from the be ...

only a year after entering the academy. Filipchenko was arrested in December 1905 due to being present at a meeting of the Soviet Workers' Deputies, but was released shortly afterwards. However, Filipchenko was arrested later the same month after helping to organize workers in the

Nevsky District Nevsky District () is a district of the federal city of St. Petersburg, Russia. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 466,013; up from 438,061 recorded in the 2002 Census. Geography The district is the only one in St. Petersb ...

of Saint Petersburg, serving four months in prison during which he studied both philosophy and for government examinations. Though he would later join the Schlisselburg Committee, which assisted with the plight of political prisoners, and the

Socialist Revolutionary Party The Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR; ,, ) was a major socialist political party in the late Russian Empire, during both phases of the Russian Revolution, and in early Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Russia. The party memb ...

, Filipchenko stepped away from politics after 1906 to focus his attention on scientific pursuits. After graduating from Saint Petersburg State University's Zoology Department in 1906, Filipchenko was accepted to Saint Petersburg State University's Zoology and Comparative Anatomy Master's program in 1910. He pursued comparative embryology for his candidate's thesis due to his interest in the presentation and evolution of physical characteristics in animals. By engaging in a project that allowed him to compare the embryonic development in higher-level taxa (i.e. class, orders, etc.), Filipchenko gained a broader perspective on inheritance that would later inform his ideas on macroevolution.

Career

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. In later years, the Bureau would be renamed the Bureau of Genetics and Eugenics in 1925 and finally the Laboratory of Genetics in 1930, but regardless of its name, the work of the institution would go on to form the foundation of the Institute of Genetics at the USSR Academy of Science. However, in the wake of the

first five-year plan First five-year plan may refer to: * First five-year plan (China) * First Five-Year Plans (Pakistan) * First five-year plan (Soviet Union) The first five-year plan (, ) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a list of economi ...

, Filipchenko became publicly castigated for his work in orthogenesis and in eugenics and was relieved of his position at

in 1930. His Laboratory of Genetics and Experimental Zoology was disbanded shortly afterward.

Personal life

Filipchenko was married to Nadezhda Pavlovna, with whom he had a son by the name of Gleb, who was a physicist. Both Nadezhda and Gleb were killed during the

blockade of Leningrad A blockade is the act of actively preventing a country or region from receiving or sending out food, supplies, weapons, or communications, and sometimes people, by military force. A blockade differs from an embargo or sanction, which are le ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Death

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. While in Leningrad, Filipchenko contracted streptococcal meningitis and later died at midnight between May 19 and May 20, 1930. His head was donated to Bekhterev’s Brain Institute for research, while the rest of his remains were buried in

Smolensky Cemetery Smolensky Cemetery () is the oldest continuously operating cemetery in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Scientific career

''Variabilität und Variation''

In his 1927 German text ''Variabilität und Variation'', Filipchenko introduced the idea of two separate forms of evolution: evolution within a species, or

, and evolution that occurs in higher taxonomic categories, which he termed

. While microevolution was governed by a system of inheritance dictated by genetics, Filipchenko based macroevolution on cytoplasmic variability rather than genetic inheritance.

Views on Darwin

Though

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

was embraced by many Russian biologists in Filipchenko's day, there did exist elements of opposition to Darwin's ideas, most commonly in the form of "direct evolution," or

orthogenesis Orthogenesis, also known as orthogenetic evolution, progressive evolution, evolutionary progress, or progressionism, is an Superseded theories in science, obsolete biological hypothesis that organisms have an innate tendency to evolution, evolve ...

. While Filipchenko self-identified as a Darwinist, he only did so in the sense that he believed in the idea of evolution. He did not subscribe to the belief that Darwin's concept of

natural selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the Heredity, heritable traits characteristic of a population over generation ...

was as integral to the process of evolution as Darwin espoused, instead positing that evolution was not governed by the principles of

Lamarck Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (; ), was a French naturalist, biologist, academic, and soldier. He was an early proponent of the idea that biolo ...

or natural selection, but rather was intrinsic to life itself. 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.

Involvement in Eugenics

Filipchenko's investigations into genetics, craniometry, the inheritance of quantitative characters, and neurology eventually introduced him to ideas on eugenics that were being developed by his contemporaries in the United States and Europe. These ideas on eugenics proved so powerful to Filipchenko that he himself began to write papers and give lectures on the subject in 1918. Filipchenko would later go on to form the Russian Eugenics Society in Moscow in 1920, as well as the Bureau of Eugenics in February 1921, an independent eugenics research institution in Petrograd. Ultimately, Filipchenko, along with

Nikolai Koltsov Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov (; 14 July 1872 – 2 December 1940) was a Russian biologist and a pioneer of modern genetics. Among his students were Nikolay Timofeeff-Ressovsky, Vladimir Pavlovich Efroimson, Alexander Sergeevich Serebrovsky, A ...

, would become the main leaders of the Russian eugenics movement. 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 also due to the immense amount of funding directed towards eugenics due to the Soviet government's interest in the subject. Eugenics seemed to be the practical application of genetics relative to human health, and since this fact dovetailed with the Soviet penchant for scientific social planning, and so Soviet institutions like the

Commissariat of Public Health The Ministry of Health (MOH) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (), formed on 15 March 1946, was one of the most important government offices in the Soviet Union. It was formerly (until 1946) known as the People's Commissariat for H ...

poured funding into the subject. Filipchenko and his Bureau of Eugenics created charts of the pedigrees of various Soviet academics and intellectuals in an attempt to ascertain the location of "race" within an individual. But Filipchenko was staunchly against

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

ideas regarding the sterilization of undesirables and mass insemination of women by men with exceptional genetics, stating that such acts were "crude assaults on the human person" and that the best way to create a "desirable breed" was through

positive selection In population genetics, directional selection is a type of natural selection in which one extreme phenotype is favored over both the other extreme and moderate phenotypes. This genetic selection causes the allele frequency to shift toward the ...

. In Filipchenko's eyes, eugenic progress could only be achieved through education rather than legislative or scientific methods. However, by 1925, the appeal of Soviet eugenics had waned due to issues outside of just the negative aspects of the subject. A great controversy arose regarding the compatibility of genetics, and by extension eugenics, with Marxist science. Filipchenko, in an attempt to defend eugenics’ relevance to Marxist dialectic, argued against

Lamarckism Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...

, the other theory on inheritance that some Soviet scientists had argued was more compatible with the tenets of

Marxism Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...

, by stating that if it were true, then the negative qualities that Lamarckism associated with poverty and the lower class would have prevented them from rising up against the bourgeoisie in the first place. Despite eugenics surviving the conflict between genetics and Lamarckism, Filipchenko's work in eugenics was effectively cut short with the emergence of the

Great Break (USSR) The Great Turn or Great Break () was the radical change in the economic policy of the USSR from 1928 to 1929, primarily consisting of the process by which the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921 was abandoned in favor of the acceleration of colle ...

in 1929. During this period, eugenics was referred to as a “bourgeois doctrine,” and as such the USSR would become the first country to officially ban the subject. Filipchenko's work in the subject would later be one of the key reasons for his dismissal from Saint Petersburg in 1930.

Impact

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. He was also the first to publish a textbook on the subject of inheritance and genetics in Russia, which was called ''Nasledstvennost. His articles and textbooks on inheritance were some of the first entry points for Russian biologists like Dobzhansky to modern genetics, and it is for this reason that Soviet botanist and historian Peter Zhukovsky once called Filipchenko "the teacher of our youth."

Published works

During his career, Filipchenko published more than 100 works in Russian, 20 works in German, and 4 works in French, often under the name "J.A. Philiptschenko." Below are a few of the articles he put out in his lifetime. * ''Razvitie izotomy'' (The development of isotomes; St. Petersburg, 1912) * ''Izmenchivost’ i evoliutsiia'' (Variation and evolution; Petrograd and Moscow, 1915; 2nd ed., Petersburg, 1921) * ''Proiskhozhdenie domashnykh zhivotnykh'' (The origin of domesticated animals; Petrograd, 1916; 2nd ed., Leningrad, 1924) * ''Nasledstvennost’'' (Heredity; Moscow, 1917; 2nd ed., 1924; 3rd ed., 1926) * ''Chto takoe evgenika?'' (What is eugenics?; Petrograd. 1921) * ''Kak nasleduetsia razlichnye osobennosti cheloveka'' (How various human traits are inherited; Petrograd, 1921) * ''Izmenchivost i metody ee izucheniia'' (Variation and methods for its study: Petrograd, 1923;2nd ed. Leningrad 1926; 3rd ed., 1927; 4th ed., Moscow and Leningrad 1929) * ''Obshchedostupnaia biologiia'' (Biology for the general reader; Petrograd, 1923; 15th ed., 1930) * ''Evoliutsionnaia ideia v biologii'' (The evolutionary idea in biology; Moscow, 1923; 2nd ed., 1926; 3rd ed., 1977) * ''Puti uluchsheniia chelovecheskogo roda (evgenika)'' (Ways of improving the human race ugenics Leningrad, 1924) * "Frensis Gal’ton i Gregor Mendel” (Francis Galton and Gregor Mendel; Moscow, 1925) * ''Besedy o zhivykh sushchestvakh'' (Conversations about living substances; Leningrad, 1925) * ''Nasledstvenny li'' ''priobretennye priznaki''? (Are acquired characteristics inherited?: Leningrad. 1925) * ''Variabilitat und variation'' (Berlin, 1927) * ''I, Rasteniia'' (Plants; Leningrad, 1927) * ''II, Zhivotnye'' (Animals; Leningrad, 1928) * ''Genetika i ee znachenie dlia zhivotnovodstva'' (Genetics and its significance for animal breeding; Moscow and Leningrad, 1931) * ''Eksperimental naia zoologiia'' (Experimental zoology; Leningrad and Moscow, 1932) * ''Genetika Miagkikh pshenits'' (The genetics of soft wheats; Moscow and Leningrad, 1934)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Filipchenko, Yuri People from Oryol Oblast Russian entomologists 1882 births 1930 deaths Soviet entomologists Orthogenesis Russian scientists