Trofim Lysenko

Soviet agrobiologist Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, was mainly known for his work on temperature variation on the life-cycle of plants before he rejected Mendelian genetics for his own theories. He became director of the USSR Institute of Genetics as a result of support from Joseph Stalin, who hoped he could eradicate famine. He did not believe in DNA or genes, and after WWII, combined his own theories with those of Olga Lepeshinskaya, to proclaim that non-cellular material could produce living cells. One of his theories, that plants of the same species can be planted very close together because they won't compete, has been blamed for more famines in the USSR and for bringing on China's Great Famine in 1959-61. Before the 1930s the Soviets had a thriving genetics community, but due to the imprisonment of anyone opposed to Lysenko's theories, it has been claimed he set Soviet biology back by 50 years.