THEORY TURNED INTO PRACTICE: M. M. ZAVADOVSKII AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF A METHOD FOR ARTIFICIAL SUPERFECUNDITY IN LIVESTOCK
At all times, increasing livestock has been an important task for agriculture. In the late 1930s - early 1940s, a hormonal method for stimulating superfecundity that consisted in using hormonal preparations to induce superovulation in animals resulting in unusually abundant offspring, was added to the stock breeders' traditional battery of methods. This paper considers the contribution of a Soviet researcher M. M. Zavadovskii to the development of this method. This contribution had been most preeminent as Zavadovskii is the central figure in the history of this method, having been the first to develop its practically implementable modification, prove its effectiveness by testing it in a field trial on a large population of animals, and succeed in getting the new method officially accepted by the Soviet authorities and widely implemented. At the same time, Zavadovskii's efforts encountered much antagonism, sometimes blatant, on the part of “agricultural functionaries” and leading figures in agricultural science. These aspects of the development of the artificial superfecundity method are also reviewed in this paper. We also touch upon wider themes such as the impact of social and political needs on the scientist's work; the rejection of the new by the ossified scientific establishment; the impact of political ideology on the fates of the scientists and their teachings; the role of patronage in science, etc., that may be of interest not only for the historians of biology and agriculture but also for the historians of science as a whole.