“He reminds me very much of Mozart...”: on N.I. Vavilov’s becoming a science organizer through the eyes of an eyewitness

This paper presents the letters from the founder of Russian scientific cotton
breeding, agronomist andplant breeder G.S. Zaitsev, to his wife. The letters date
back to his first visit to the Department of Applied Botany and Plant Breeding in
Petrograd in 1923. It characterizes both the new period in the work of the
scientific institution headed by N.I. Vavilov and the first steps of Zaitsev’s own
brilliant, though sadly short-lived, scientific career.