Georgy Dmitrievich Karpechenko

Georgy Dmitrievich Karpechenko was a Soviet geneticist. He was head of the Genetics Department at the All-Union Institute of Plant Industry and head of the Department of Plant Genetics at Leningrad State University, professor. He was born into a surveyor's family in Velsk (Vologda Governorate) and received his secondary education at the Vologda Gymnasium. In 1917 he enrolled at Perm University and later transferred to the Moscow Agricultural Academy, which he graduated from in 1922. After graduating from the academy he remained to work in the Department of Plant Breeding.

In 1925, at the invitation of Nikolai Vavilov, Karpechenko began working at the All-Union Institute of Plant Industry (VIR), where he established a genetics laboratory in Detskoe Selo (now the town of Pushkin). From 1931 Karpechenko headed the Department of Plant Genetics at Leningrad University, where he taught a course in genetics until 1941.

The geneticist's most significant scientific achievements are connected with distant hybridization of plants. Karpechenko was the first in the world to obtain fertile intergeneric hybrids by using artificial polyploidy. On 15 February 1941 the scientist was arrested, and on 9 July 1941 the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to death on a fabricated charge of sabotage. Karpechenko was executed on 28 July 1941 and was posthumously rehabilitated on 21 April 1956.