Denis Buican

Denis Buican (born Dumitru Buican-Peligrad; 21 December 1934 in Bucharest) is a Romanian-French scientist, bilingual writer, biologist, philosopher and a historian of science.

[1] His father Dumitru Peligrad a boyar and philanthropist was placed under house arrest after the invasion of Romania by the Red Army (starting 23 August 1944), but he refused to submit to regular police checks.

Pioneer of Romanian radio-genetics (his first studies focused on the influence of electricity on the life of plants), agronomist (1956), Doctor (Ph.D.) in Genetics (1961), then a professor at the University of Bucharest, he fought theories of Lysenkoism, imposed by the ex-USSR in the former so-called "popular democratic" countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

It updates and complements the previous "Synthetic Theory" having in view that the natural selection underlined by Charles Darwin is to be applied only to phenotype, so that certain phenomena (such as lethal mutations) were not sufficiently taken into account by this old model.

Historian, based on the epistemological model of Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962), he also considered the introduction of genetics in France as a "run with obstacles": the science of heredity was accepted only in 1945, not without some resistance by biologists themselves, most of them being attached to Néo-lamarckisme [fr].

Very critical in respect to the French university system - which he readily denounces as having a clan structure, attitudes and behaviors - he considers that "a society aiming to be simultaneously equitable and efficient does require a selective - and even a micro-selective - educational system being able to offer to everyone, from cradle to the grave, the possibility to develop herself / himself without any discrimination of class or race, of religion or customs, as far as her/ his genetic heritage does allow."