Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyayev

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.

"It was his brother's influence that caused him to have this special interest in genetics," Belyayev's protégé Lyudmila Trut later said. Both Belyayev brothers were Darwinists and believers in Mendelian genetics. At the time Belyayev came of age, however, life was dangerous in the Soviet Union for geneticists with such views, because the Stalinist regime supported the scientific theories of agronomist Trofim Lysenko and outlawed research inspired by the findings of Gregor Mendel. As Trut recalled, "genetics was considered fake science." Indeed, under the rule of Stalin, leading geneticists who believed in Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics were considered enemies of the state. Several of them were sent to prison, and at least one, Nikolai Vavilov, was sentenced to death, and died of starvation in prison in 1943.

The next year, Belyayev graduated from the Ivanov Biological Institute and began working in the Department of Fur Animal Breeding at the Central Research Laboratory in Moscow, which was affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Trade. In 1941, he was conscripted into the military, and was wounded and received several military decorations. He then resumed work at the laboratory.

Despite the persecution of adherents of Darwinism and Mendelian genetics, Belyayev wrote a dissertation on "the variation and inheritance of silver-colored fur in silver-black foxes" and continued to hold fast to his belief in evolution and Mendelian genetics. Still, to be safe, he disguised his genetics research as studies in animal physiology. Nonetheless, his known interest in genetics led to his dismissal from his position as head of the Department of Fur Animal Breeding in 1948.

After the death of Stalin in 1953, the Soviet persecution of geneticists began to ease. From 1958 to the end of his life, Belyayev worked for the Siberian Division of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which he helped found. In 1963, he became Director of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics (IC&G) in Novosibirsk, and held that position until his death. Under his leadership, according to one source, "the institute became a center of basic and applied research in both classical genetics and modern molecular genetics." He was appointed an academician in 1973.