Vladimir Vladimirovich Sakharov

Born Feb. 15 (28), 1902, in Simbirsk, now Ul’ianovsk; died Jan. 9, 1969, in Moscow. Soviet geneticist.

Sakharov graduated from Moscow State University in 1926. He was a student of N. K. Kol’tsov. From 1927 to 1948 he worked at the Institute of Experimental Biology (later the Institute of Cytology, Histology, and Embryology). Beginning in 1950 he worked in the subdepartment of botany of the Moscow Pharmaceutical Institute, and beginning in 1957 in the laboratory of radiation genetics of the Institute of Biophysics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was director of the laboratory of polyploidy of the Institute of General Genetics in 1966 and 1967 and of the Institute of the Biology of Development of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1967 to 1969. He was a professor at the K. A. Timiriazev Moscow Agricultural Academy from 1965 to 1969.

Sakharov’s principal works dealt with human genetics, including the role of heredity in the development of goiter. Sakharov helped establish the principles of chemical mutagenesis and the action of various mutagens. He obtained polyploids from plants and studied them in plants by means of colchicine; he established the effectiveness of selection on fertility in polyploids of buckwheat and demonstrated the feasibility of their practical utilization.