Translated from the Russian by Vadim SternikFirst published 1987Revised from the 1979 Russian editionTogether with the names of Darwin, Linnaeus, Mendel and other giants of science, the name of N. Vavilov adorns the cover of the international journal Heredity.There are but a few prominent scientists worldwide, who, in our century, worked as fruitfully as he did so that humankind would have plenty of bread.Nikolai Vavilov was elected to the Academies of Sciences of India, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Scotland, the Royal Society of London, the New-York Geograph­ ic and American Botanic Societies, the Linnean So­ciety of London, and other scientific institutions else­ where.A mountain in the Antarctic Regions, a glacier in the Pamirs, streets and squares in many a city have been named after him. An international committee has decid­ ed to name a large area of the Moon's surface after the Vavilov brothers (his brother, S. Vavilov, an out­ standing physicist, headed the USSR Academy of Sciences for many years).Portraits of the Great Sower can be encountered in the offices of plant breeders and agronomists in Mexico and Ceylon. Those who continue the glorious cause begun by him are working everywhere.A special committee of the United Nations Organi­zation has deemed it imperative to rely on Vavilov's theory of the centres of origin of cultivated plants in planning international expeditions.As during his life-time, N. Vavilov continues to con­ tribute to the world's agricultural theory and practice.