Valery Nikolayevich Soyfer (), born in 1936 in Gorky is a Russian-American biophysicist, molecular geneticist, historian of science, human rights advocate, and humanitarian.
Biography Born in 1936 in Gorky. He graduated from the Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy and the Faculty of Physics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. He is a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, the Academy of Pedagogical and Social Sciences, and a number of other academies in the world.
In the USSR, he worked at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, Institute of Poliomyelitis and Viral Encephalitis, and Institute of General Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1970–1978, was head of Laboratory of Molecular Genetics of the USSR Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Vaskhnill), in 1974–1978 – scientific director of the All-Union Research Institute for Applied Molecular Biology and Genetics (he was the creator of this institution). In 1976, became involved in human rights advocacy, was fired from his scientific positions on December 31, 1978. His Soviet citizenship was stripped in 1988 and he emigrated to the United States in the same year.
From 1988 to 1990, was a distinguished university visiting professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and the Center of Biotechnology of Ohio State University in Columbus. From 1990 to 993, he was Clarence Robinson Professor and in 1993–2016 is the distinguished university professor at George Mason University, and in 1990–2015 – director of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at this university.
He has published 35 books (25 in Russia, 6 in the US and England, 1 in Germany, 1 in Vietnam, 1 in Estonia and 1 in Czech Republic). Almost 350 scientific articles published in international and national journals and collective monographs (118 of them in English; 4 in German, 4 in French, 2 in Swedish, 2 in Lithuanian, 2 in Czech, the rest in Russian); 45 articles in encyclopedias (4 of them in English). Almost 60 scientific-popular articles published in Russian, English, German, French and Spanish. More than 100 abstracts were presented at national and international conferences, symposia and congresses (37 of them in English). Almost 60 articles appeared in newspapers, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Tribune, El País, Figaro, Izvestiya, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Kommersant and others.
Awards and accolades Valery Soyfer was awarded the International Gregor Mendel medal for outstanding achievement in biology in 1995, with the Gregor Mendel medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences in 1996, was elected as an honorary professor of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences for “An Outstanding Contribution to Science and for Development of International Cooperation” in 2001, and won the Nikolai Vavilov Silver Medal in 2002. He is an Honorary Member of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1983), Honorary Doctor at Kazan State University (1996), and Honorary Professor at Lomonosov Moscow State University (2003), and Rostov State (now South Federal) University (2003).
Personal Valery Soyfer was born in a Russian-Jewish family. Father – Nikolai Ilyich Soyfer (1898–1950) was a journalist and newspaper editor, mother – Anna Alexandrovna Kuznetsova (1902–1975). Valery married Nina I. Yakovleva in 1961, she graduated as a Medical Doctor (M.D.) from the first Moscow Medical Institute (Academy), later specializing in biochemistry and worked together with her husband for 35 years from 1963 until 1998. They have two children, Marina (born in 1963) and Vladimir (born in 1965) and five grandchildren. Valery's brother Vladimir (1930–2016) was a nuclear physicist and developed the most sensitive method of measuring radioactivity in oceans and underground water. More of Soyfer's family history is depicted in his "Very Personal Book (2011, Novosibirsk)".
Scientific research Most of Valery Soyfer's scientific works were devoted to the study of radiation and chemical DNA damage, the molecular mechanisms of mutagenesis, the role of damage of structure of double-stranded and triple-stranded DNA. He discovered the mechanisms of DNA repair in higher plants and proved the role of DNA repair in the rate of mutations in microorganisms and plants. Has had significant contributions to the study of history of biology and the suppression of genetic and cell biology due to political reasons in the Soviet Union.
Dr. Soyfer studied comparative anatomy of seeds of representatives of Cucurbitaceae L. (Juss.) family as an evolutionary indicatorSoyfer, V. N. 1957. Morphological and anatomical structures of seeds of Cucurbitaceae L. (Juss). In: Scientific Works of Students of Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, v. 7, pp. 5-17. (In Russian); Soyfer, V. N. 1964. Anatomy of seeds of Cucurbitaceae Juss. as an evolutionary character. Bull. Moscow Soc. Naturalists, ser. biol., v. 69, No. 1, pp. 86-101. (In Russian). For this work he was awarded with the 1st prize at the annual competition of scientific works of students of Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy. This work was defended later as the Ph.D. dissertation in biology.Soyfer, V. N. 1964. Comparative anatomical studies of the seeds of the family Cucurbitaceae Juss. Thesis of the Ph. D. dissertation (Biological Sciences). Minsk, 1964, 20 pp. (In Russian). See also review in Kew Bulletin.Reviewed in: Jeffrey, C. 1966. On the classification of the Cucurbitaceae. Kew Bulletin, London (Her Majesty’s Stationery Service), v. 20, No. 3, pp. 417-426. (In English).
From 1963 until 1966, he studied the mutagenesis of T2 bacteriophage at high doses of UV and gamma irradiation.,Ardashnikov, S. N., V. N. Soyfer and D. M. Goldfarb. 1964. Induction of h-mutations in the extracellular phage T2 by gamma-irradiation. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Communs., v. 16, No. 5, pp. 455-459. (In English).Soyfer, V.N. 1966. The mutational process at high doses of irradiation. Bull. Moscow Soc. Naturalists, ser. biol., 1966, vol. 71, No. 5, pp. 88-99. (In Russian). He also studied the phenomenon of the maximum of frequency of mutations at high doses of radiation and suggested an explanation for this phenomenon based on the consecutive damage of nucleotide codons in the genes.Soyfer, V. N. 1963. The maximum of the frequency of mutations in radiation biology. The Scientific Reports of the I. V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, No. 33/113, March 1, 57 pp. (In Russian).