Theodosius Dobzhansky

Dobzhansky, Theodosius 

(Feodosii Grigor’evich Dobrzhanskii). Born Jan. 12 (25), 1900, in Nemirov, in what is now the Ukrainian SSR; died Dec. 19, 1975, in Davis, Calif. American geneticist. Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1941) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dobzhansky graduated from the University of Kiev in 1921. He taught at Leningrad University from 1924 until 1927, when he emigrated to the United States. From 1929 to 1940 he taught at the California Institute of Technology, becoming a professor of genetics in 1936. From 1940 to 1962 he was a professor of zoology at Columbia University in New York, and from 1962 to 1970 he was a professor at Rockefeller University in New York. He became a professor of genetics at the University of California at Davis in 1971.

Dobzhansky was one of the founders of experimental population genetics and the author of the synthetic theory of evolution. He made a major contribution to the study of isolating mechanisms of evolution. Dobzhansky was a fellow of the Royal Society of London and other foreign academies of sciences.

WORKS

Genetics and the Origin of Species, 3rd ed. New York, 1951.
Heredity and the Nature of Man. London, 1965.
Genetics of the Evolutionary Process. New York–London, 1970.
Evolution. San Francisco, 1977. (With other authors.)

REFERENCES

Ayala, F. J. ‘Theodosius Dobzhansky: The Man and the Scientist.” Annual Review of Genetics, 1976, vol. 10, pp. 1–6.
Beardmore, J. A. “Theodosius Dobzhansky, 1900–1975.” Heredity, 1976, vol. 37, no. 1.
Ehrman, L., and B. Wallace. “Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky.” Nature, 1976, vol. 260, no. 5,547, p. 179.