Raissa L’vovna Berg | Jewish Women's Archive (original) (raw)
March 27, 1913–March 1, 2006
In Brief
Born in St. Petersburg, Raissa Berg began studying genetics in 1930. She continued this work at several universities and institutes in the 1930s and 40s and worked with many eminent researchers. With the rise of anti-genetics Soviet policy, Berg was first demoted and then dismissed in 1948. Nevertheless, she kept writing and continued her research at home, eventually discovering “correlative Pleiades: in plants. She reentered academia in 1954 with a professorship appointment, which contributed significantly to the reestablishment of the scientific field of genetics in Russia, but she was forced into retirement once again in 1968. After emigrating to the United States in 1974, Berg taught at universities and traveled for lectures and genetic congresses, remaining active until her death in 2006.
Bibliography
Berg, Raissa L. Interview with author. Paris, October 2002.
Berg, Raisa L'vovna. Sukhovei: vospominaniia genetika. New York: Chalidze Publications, 1980.
Conner, Jeffrey K., and Russell Lande. "Raissa L. Berg's Contributions to the Study of Phenotypic Integration, with a Professional Biographical Sketch." Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences 369, no. 1649 (2014): 1-4.
Glass, Bentley. "Foreword." The Quarterly Review of Biology 65, no. 4 (1990): 413-21.
Kolosova, L. D., Maletckii S. I., Zakharov, I. K. “Raissa L’vovna Berg: on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of her birth” (Russian). Bulletin VOGIS 24–25 (2003).
On the history of genetics in Russia, see:
Adams, M., ed. The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia. New York: 1990.
Graham, L. Science, Philosophy and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union. New York: 1987.
Graham, Loren. "Epigenetics and Russia." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 160, no. 3 (2016): 266-71.
Joravsky, D. The Lysenko Affair. Chicago: 1970.
Krementsov, N. Stalinist Science. Princeton: 1997.
Krementsov, Nikolai. "A "Second Front" in Soviet Genetics: The International Dimension of the Lysenko Controversy, 1944-1947." Journal of the History of Biology 29, no. 2 (1996): 229-50.
Medvedev Z. The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko. New York: 1969.
Soyfer, V. N. Lysenko and the tragedy of Soviet science. Translated from the Russian by L. Gruliow and R. Gruliow. New Brunswick: 1994.