Thread by @Botanygeek

This is Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian botanist.

He is undoubtedly one of the most influential people in human history (that you have never heard of).

As you and I may well be alive today because of his work, here's a (short) thread about him on the 76th anniversary of his death.

Vavilov dedicated his life to fighting world hunger, by studying the genetics of crops in a hope to increase yields.

Because of him, we now know that essentially all the world's food plants hail from as little as 8 'hotspots' on Earth, where farming was independently invented.

He sent out teams to collect the last remaining examples of some of these crop types, amassing them in a giant seed bank - A vital genetic Ark essential to breeding new, improved crop varieties to help end hunger.

During a WW2 siege, his scientists barricaded themselves in the seed bank to protect the 250,000 specimens from destruction.

Despite being surrounded by grain, 9 of them starved to death inside to protect the precious collection for humanity.

Vavilov and his team's work laid the foundations for the miracle that is modern agriculture, which has saved billions of lives.

In fact, we still use some of his varieties today. You might well have had them for breakfast. What a hero!

But things didn't end well for Vavilov…

Despite his pioneering work, the facts he uncovered challenged the cultural and political ideology of his time. This made him deeply unpopular & replaced by pseudo-scientists.

Vavilov died in a work camp 76 years ago today, ironically of starvation.
#TrustScienceNotScaremongers