Dmitri K. Belyaev

Academician Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyaev
Dmitriy Belyaev and Domesticated Fox
Born	(1917-07-17)17 July 1917 Protasovo, Kostroma Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	14 November 1985(1985-11-14) (aged 68) Novosibirsk, Soviet Union
Nationality	Russian
Citizenship	Soviet
Alma mater	Ivanovo Agricultural Institute
Known for	Domestication of fox
Scientific career
Fields	Genetics, Theory of selection and evolution
Institutions	Institute of Cytology and Genetics, AN SSSR, Novosibirsk

Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyayev (Russian: Дмитрий Константинович Беляев, 17 July 1917 – 14 November 1985) was a Russian geneticist and academician who served as director of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics (IC&G) of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, from 1959 to 1985. His decades-long effort to breed domesticated foxes was described by The New York Times as “arguably the most extraordinary breeding experiment ever conducted.” A 2010 article in Scientific American stated that Belyayev “may be the man most responsible for our understanding of the process by which wolves were domesticated into our canine companions.”

Beginning in the 1950s, in order to uncover the genetic basis of the distinctive behavioral and physiological attributes of domesticated animals, Belyayev and his team spent decades breeding the wild silver fox (Vulpes vulpes) and selecting for reproduction only those individuals in each generation that showed the least fear of humans. After several generations of controlled breeding, a majority of the silver foxes no longer showed any fear of humans and often wagged their tails and licked their human caretakers to show affection. They also began to display spotted coats, floppy ears, curled tails, as well as other physical attributes often found in domesticated animals, thus confirming Belyayev’s hypothesis that both the behavioral and physical traits of domesticated animals could be traced to "a collection of genes that conferred a propensity to tameness—a genotype that the foxes perhaps shared with any species that could be domesticated".

Belyayev’s experiments were the result of a politically motivated demotion, in response to defying the now discredited non-Mendellian theories of Lysenkoism, which were politically accepted in the Soviet Union at the time. Belyayev has since been vindicated in recent years by major scientific journals, and by the Soviet establishment as a pioneering figure in modern genetics.

Belyayev was born on 17 July 1917, in Protasovo, a town in the Russian province of Kostroma. He was his family's fourth and youngest son. His father, Konstantin Pavlovich, was a priest. His brother Nikolai, who was 18 years his senior, was a prominent geneticist who worked with Sergei Chetverikov (1880-1959), a pioneer of population genetics.