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As far as I know, I was the only Jew among all my colleagues.
I liked biology, but not everything they taught us there, most of it was Soviet crap. I remember Lepeshinskaya, who was famous for proving Virhoff’s theory wrong: the theory said that a cell can only be born from another cell, and she proved the contrary with photos, how from organic matter cells were built to form an egg. [Olga Borisovna Lepeshinskaya, born in Russia in 1871, claimed to observe the formation of cells in egg-yolks of birds and fish and also during the process of wound healing.] But it was proved some years ago that all the great Lepeshinskaya did was cheat because she simply inversed the photos taken from the most simple and natural degradation of an egg into unorganized organic matter and presented it as the break-through of the century in biology.
We also studied the theories of Lisenko and Miciurin. [Lisenko believed that socialist agriculture needed a profoundly biological theory, whose full swing would enable it to have big and stable harvests. Miciurin, who was the was the founder of ‘creative soviet darwinism’, abjured genetics and the laws of heredity, invoking instead the theoretical principles of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.] But we were lucky that we had some good teachers, like professor Preda, they still belonged to the ‘old true school’. This was in 1951-1953, they didn’t have time to change all professors. He taught us, in a subversive manner, true biology. The communists considered the theories of Mendel to be idealistic, but Mendel was perfectly right, as science proved later. [According to Mendel’s theory an individual has two ‘factors’, or genes, for each trait, one from each parents. Each copy of a factor is called an allele. The two alleles may or may not contain the same information. When they differ, the allele with the dominant information will be manifested.] Anyway, professor Preda held a splendid lecture on Mendel’s theory, with proof, and ended with the words, ‘This is Mendel’s theory, and it’s not true!
I liked biology, but not everything they taught us there, most of it was Soviet crap. I remember Lepeshinskaya, who was famous for proving Virhoff’s theory wrong: the theory said that a cell can only be born from another cell, and she proved the contrary with photos, how from organic matter cells were built to form an egg. [Olga Borisovna Lepeshinskaya, born in Russia in 1871, claimed to observe the formation of cells in egg-yolks of birds and fish and also during the process of wound healing.] But it was proved some years ago that all the great Lepeshinskaya did was cheat because she simply inversed the photos taken from the most simple and natural degradation of an egg into unorganized organic matter and presented it as the break-through of the century in biology.
We also studied the theories of Lisenko and Miciurin. [Lisenko believed that socialist agriculture needed a profoundly biological theory, whose full swing would enable it to have big and stable harvests. Miciurin, who was the was the founder of ‘creative soviet darwinism’, abjured genetics and the laws of heredity, invoking instead the theoretical principles of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.] But we were lucky that we had some good teachers, like professor Preda, they still belonged to the ‘old true school’. This was in 1951-1953, they didn’t have time to change all professors. He taught us, in a subversive manner, true biology. The communists considered the theories of Mendel to be idealistic, but Mendel was perfectly right, as science proved later. [According to Mendel’s theory an individual has two ‘factors’, or genes, for each trait, one from each parents. Each copy of a factor is called an allele. The two alleles may or may not contain the same information. When they differ, the allele with the dominant information will be manifested.] Anyway, professor Preda held a splendid lecture on Mendel’s theory, with proof, and ended with the words, ‘This is Mendel’s theory, and it’s not true!
Period
Location
Cluj Napoca
Romania
Interview
Stefan Guth
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