Georgii Adamovich Nadson

Born May 23, 1867, in Kiev; died Dec. 5, 1940. Soviet microbiologist and botanist. Academican of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1929); Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1933).

In 1889, Nadson graduated from the department of natural sciences at the University of St. Petersburg, where he subsequently taught the anatomy, physiology, morphology, and taxonomy of plants from 1890 to 1895. At the university in 1896, he began teaching a course in microbiology, the first such course in Russia. From 1897 he was professor of botany at the Women’s (now the First Leningrad) Medical Institute. He was head of the botany and microbiology laboratory of the State Roentgenologic and Radiological Institute from 1918 to 1937. Nadson also headed, from 1930 to 1934, the Laboratory of Microbiology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; the laboratory was founded on his initiative in Leningrad. He was director of the Institute of Microbiology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1934 to 1938. He was also editor of the first Russian journal in general microbiology from 1914 to 1938.

Nadson’s early works were devoted to the geological activity of microorganisms and to the action of harmful factors on microorganisms. In 1925, with G. S. Filippov, he demonstrated the possibility of artificially producing mutations in lower fungi through the use of ionizing radiation. He investigated principles of induced variation in microbes and experimented with the production of new, stable strains of microorganisms.