Herman Muller — geneticist with roots in the USSR
Hermann Joseph Muller (1890–1967) was an American geneticist who received the 1946 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the production of mutations by means of X-ray irradiation. From 1933 he worked at the Institute of Genetics in Leningrad and then Moscow, and left the USSR in 1937 after Stalin disapproved of his book Out of the Night. He was professor of zoology at Indiana University from 1945 to 1964, warned for decades about radiation hazards and in 1955 signed the Russell–Einstein Manifesto.
Tracing the roots — Leningrad and Moscow (worked there 1933–1937)
He went to the Soviet Union in 1933 at the invitation of Nikolai Vavilov and worked at the Institute of Genetics in Leningrad and, from 1934, in Moscow. He left in 1937, as the campaign against genetics led by Trofim Lysenko gained ground and after Stalin disapproved of his book Out of the Night.
Leningrad and Moscow (worked there 1933–1937). At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.