Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov
Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov ( Russian Илья Иванович Иванов * July 20 . Jul / 1. August 1870 greg. In Shchigry , Kursk ; † 20th March 1932 in Alma-Ata , Kazakh SSR ) was a Russian biologist and animal breeders. Among other things, he is known for attempting to crossbreed chimpanzees with humans .
Life
Ivanov studied in Kharkov and worked from 1917 to 1921 and from 1924 to 1930 at the State Institute for Experimental Veterinary Science, in the intervening years at a research station that dealt with the breeding and reproduction of domestic animals. From 1928 to 1932 he worked at the Moscow and Kazakh Zoological Institutes .
The methods developed by Ivanov for the artificial fertilization of farm animals were widespread in the Soviet Union.
Ivanov had also succeeded in producing the first hybrid of zebra and horse . He then tried to create hybrids of humans and chimpanzees. His experiments with chimpanzees, which seem strange today, were intended as a test of Darwin's hypothesis that chimpanzees were man's closest relatives. Plans to fertilize women who were ready to experiment with chimpanzee sperm failed due to a lack of male chimpanzees. In order to obtain this, he contacted Rosalía Abreu in 1926 , who had kept a group of chimpanzees in Cuba for more than 20 years . He had found out about this in 1924 when, with financial support from the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, he visited the Pasteur Institute in Paris and its branch in Guinea , where he tried to fertilize three female chimpanzees with human sperm ; however, they did not become pregnant. The academy supported his research because a confirmation of Darwin's theory of evolution promised to provide arguments in the fight against the Christian doctrine of creation . With regard to the male chimpanzees, Abreu was initially open-minded, but after a threatening letter from the Ku Klux Klan she withdrew from this project.
In 1930 Ivanov fell out of favor with Stalin and was sentenced to five years' exile in Alma-Ata , where he died in 1932.
Web links
- ZDF contribution: ARTE: Of monkeys and people. How the Soviet Union wanted to breed the ideal socialist. ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Geert de Vriese: The researcher who wanted to cross monkeys and humans. , on Spektrum.de June 8, 2019.
- Martin Pfaffenzeller: Human-Monkey-Hybrid - The Legend of Stalin's Frankenstein , on Spiegel.de , January 7, 2019.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Clive DL Wynne: Rosalia Abreu and the Apes of Havana. In: International Journal of Primatology , Volume 29, No. 2, 2008, pp. 289-302, doi : 10.1007 / s10764-008-9242-0
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ivanov, Ilya Ivanovich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Иванов, Илья Иванович (Russian spelling) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian biologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 1, 1870 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Shchigry , Kursk Governorate |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 20, 1932 |
| Place of death | Alma-ata |