Mikhail Ivanov

Born Sept. 20 (Oct. 2), 1871, in Yalta; died Oct. 29, 1935, in Moscow. Soviet scientist in the area of animal breeding; academician of the V.I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1935).

Ivanov graduated from the Kharkov Veterinary Institute in 1897. In 1897 he was a district veterinarian in Orel Province. In 1898 he traveled through the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy observing animal-breeding practice and then audited a course of lectures at the agricultural division of the Zürich Polytechnical Institute. From 1900 to 1913 he was a docent and then a professor at the Kharkov Veterinary Institute. From 1914 to the end of his life he was a professor at the Moscow Agricultural Institute (now the K.A. Timiriazev Moscow Agricultural Academy). From 1926 to 1930 he was a professor at the Moscow Zootechnical Institute and at the Moscow Institute of Sheep Raising. In 1935 he was elected a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.

On Ivanov’s suggestion a zootechnical experimental station and a breeding station were organized in 1925 in Askaniia-Nova, Kherson Oblast (now the M.F. Ivanov Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Animal Breeding of the Steppe Regions, “Askaniia-Nova”), which he directed until the end of his life. Ivanov proposed a scientifically grounded methodology and a system of measures for producing new breeds of swine and sheep and improving existing breeds. He produced the Askaniia breed of fine-wooled sheep and the Ukrainian-steppe white breed of swine; he also began work on producing new breeds of the type of the Corriedale, mountain merino, and the polytocous Karakul sheep. Ivanov discovered a number of factors in the formation and development of various characters and properties of the Karakul lamb and worked out a scientific classification of lambs, which is the basis for evaluation and the present system of pedigree work in raising Karakul sheep. Ivanov was one of the founders of experimental zootechny in the USSR.

In his scientific works and practice Ivanov emphasized the tremendous role of the factors of feeding and the entire complex of breeding conditions in obtaining the desired level of productivity. The M.F. Ivanov gold medal, awarded by the V.I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, was instituted in 1968.