Experimental Stations of the Institute of Experimental Biology and the Development of Russian Genetics (1917–1929)
In this article, we examine the history of the experimental stations that N.K. Kol’tsov, the founder of the Institute of Experimental Biology, organized near Moscow, focusing on their role in the development of Russian genetics. Under the conditions of postrevolutionary chaos, the transfer of research outside the city allowed scientists to continue their work, shaping a number of features of the Moscow school of geneticists, in particular, the characteristic combination of experimental and naturalistic (field) research. These features were peculiarly reflected in the works of A.S. Serebrovskii who formulated the idea of the “gene fund,” and S.S. Chetverikov, his students and followers, who demonstrated the genetic “heterogeneity” of free-living populations of Drosophila and their difference from the Drosophila laboratory lines.