The book is dedicated to Nikolai Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky (1900-1981) - one of the largest naturalists of the XX century, an experimental geneticist and naturalist, a talented theorist, an excellent teacher, a large-scale personality. The main events of the century passed through his fate - the civil and World War II, the European Resistance and the Gulag, and from the scientific ones - the decoding of the genetic code, the splitting of the atomic nucleus.