The Oil Drum

You must be referring to Nicolai Vavilov.

An amazing Russian scientist, his story written up
in this Russian site .

No one person has ever done more to preserve biodiversity on Earth than Russian Nikolai Vavilov.

In the early 20th century he had the crucial insight that all the crops we depend on for food originated in only about a dozen regions of the earth comprising only one-fortieth of our world's land area - corn and tomatoes from Mexico, coffee from Ethiopia, wheat in Turkey, potatoes in Peru, soybeans from China, rice from Southeast Asia.

These precious areas are now called "Vavilov Centers" and are scoured for wild variants of these key plants to include in agricultural breeding efforts.

A brilliant scientist, Valivov traveled to over 65 countries in the 1920s and 1930s to gather over 50,000 seed samples. However, he fell afoul of Stalin and the loony communist science czar Trofim Lysenko; in 1940 he was arrested, and in a morbid scientific irony, died of malnutrition in Saratov prison camp in 1943.

In post-Soviet Russia and in the rest of the world where he was never scorned, Valivov is today a true scientific hero.

Valivov's original samples miraculously avoided being eaten by their starving curators during the Siege of Leningrad and became the start of theVavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry in modern-day St. Petersburg.

Their current seed collection of 380,000 gene types is by far the largest in the world and a priceless international treasure.

However, today this seed collection is under a greater threat today than during World War II. The collapse of Russian economy has left the facility short of qualified staff.

Even worse, the Institute has been ordered to evict its current building to make room for government offices and a possible presidential apartment for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It goes on... reporting on our own Al Gore visiting the site and using American funds to try to save the collection of ancient seeds Vavilov so painstakingly amassed.