Astaurov was born in Moscow to
eye surgeon Lev M. Astaurov and
gynaecologist Olga A. Tikhenko. His father had trained in
Kazan while his mother had studied in
Sorbonne and
Lyon and the family ran a private medical practice. Astaurov went to the Flerov gymnasium where his contemporaries included B.V. Kedrovsky,
Nikolay Timofeev-Ressovsky,
Alexander Gurwitsch, and G.K. Khrushchov. Astaurov was very good at drawing and learned piano with
Boris Chaliapin under professor
Feodor Koenemann. After graduating in 1921 he joined the
Moscow University and after receiving a degree in 1927 he went to study zoology under
N. K. Koltsov. In 1926 he went to work in the laboratory of
Sergei Chetverikov, to study the genetics of
Drosophila populations. His studies were on the mutant
tetraptera with four wings. He went to study the genetics and breeding of
Arabian and
Bactrian camels in
Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan from 1928 to 1929. His PhD could not be completed due to the arrest and deportation of Chetverikov based on the allegations made by
Trofim Lysenko that Mendelian geneticists were
fascists under Stalin's rule. Astaurov moved to
Tashkent and joined the
sericulture and silk research institute there. He demonstrated artificially induced
parthenogenesis in silkworm eggs. In 1936 he returned to Moscow and was able to complete his doctorate. In 1942, after the death of
Dmitriy Filatov, Astaurov continued to work at the Laboratory of Developmental Mechanics in Moscow and was made head of the department from 1947. After 1948, although not directly targeted by Lysenko, he was decreed to not work on silkworm but instead to study fish. After Stalin's death, he returned to study silkworm. The Tenth Genetics Congress at
Montreal included a Soviet delegation consisting of Lysenkoists with the exception of Astaurov who refused to join the delegation. In 1974, a researcher working with Astaurov went to attend a meeting in Italy and defected. Astaurov was called to a meeting of the
Soviet Academy where he was questioned about the "unpatriotic act" of his collaborator. He returned home from the meeting and died from a
heart failure. == References ==