Nikolai Tsitsin

Born Dec. 6 (18), 1898, in Saratov. Soviet botanist, geneticist, and plant breeder. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939) and of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1938; vice-president from 1938 to 1948). Twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1968, 1978). Member of the CPSU since 1938.

Tsitsin graduated from the Saratov Institute of Agriculture and Land Reclamation in 1927. From 1931 to 1937 he was head of a laboratory of Triticum-Agropyron hybrids, which he had organized. From 1938 to 1948, Tsitsin was chairman of the State Varietal Testing Commission of the Ministry of Agriculture of the USSR, and from 1940 to 1957 he headed the laboratory of remote hybridization of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1945 he became director of the Central Botanical Garden of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Tsitsin’s main works are devoted to distant hybridization of plants. He obtained a new species of wheat, Triticum agropyrotriticum, by crossing Triticum (wheat) with Agropyron (wheatgrass). He also developed varieties of Triticum-Agropyron hybrids.

Tsitsin is an honorary member of a number of academies in socialist countries. From 1958 to 1970 he was president, and since 1970 has been vice-president, of the Soviet-Indian Society for Friendship and Cultural Ties. Tsitsin was a deputy to the first, third, and fourth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and a delegate to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU. A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR in 1943 and the Lenin Prize in 1978, he has also been awarded five Orders of Lenin, an Order of the October Revolution, two other orders, and various medals.