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The Prophet of Food Security: Nikolay Vavilov
Paperback
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Publisher: Michael Webster
Published: Oct 27 2025
Pages: 168
Weight: 0.44
Height: 0.39 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
The man who saved the world's food died starving in prison.
Nikolay Vavilov was a visionary scientist consumed by a singular, prophetic mission: to secure humanity's food supply. Traveling to sixty-four countries, he charted the Centers of Origin of Cultivated Plants and built the world's first global gene bank, the VIR, holding the genetic blueprint for future survival.
But in Stalin's Russia, empirical truth was sedition.
Vavilov's rigorous Mendelian genetics clashed violently with the politically expedient lies of Trofim Lysenko. For his courageous refusal to abandon science for Soviet dogma, Vavilov was branded a saboteur. Arrested, subjected to brutal interrogations in Lubyanka Prison, the prophet of global food security tragically perished from starvation in a Gulag in 1943.
This is the definitive biography of a genius, his global crusade, and the staggering, profound irony of his death-a powerful testament to the triumph of scientific integrity over totalitarian darkness, and the legacy that continues to feed the world. Approx.168 pages, 32000 word count
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