In 1941 the world’s largest seed bank (created by botanist Nikolai Vavilov) was housed in Leningrad. As the Germans surrounded the city forcing mass starvation, Vavilov’s scientists refused to eat from the collection, slowly dying of hunger as they maintained 16 rooms of edible plants.
The man who first artificially cloned a fish was later forced…
The man who first artificially cloned a fish was later forced to give up his research and become a janitor by the Chinese government during the Cultural Revolution.
Leo Szilard conceived the nuclear chain reaction,the nuclear reactor, and wrote the letter…
Leo Szilard conceived the nuclear chain reaction,the nuclear reactor, and wrote the letter suggesting the Manhattan Project, which Einstein signed. After being diagnosed with bladder cancer, he designed his own radiation therapy which led to a full recovery.
The discoverer of a gene for Green Fluorescent Protein lost his grant…
The discoverer of a gene for Green Fluorescent Protein lost his grant, didn’t get tenure, left academe and was working at a car dealership in Huntsville, Alabama, when he learned that former colleagues had won the Nobel Prize using the gene he sequenced.