Timofeev-Ressovsky was a descendant of the old Russian school of scientists, characterised by broad naturalistic views on the world, simultaneously combined with exact analysis of causes and consequences and establishment of elementary phenomena.

Thus, in the summer of 1925, Timofeev-Resovskij, his wife Elena and his colleague Sergei Romanovich Tsarapkin (Zarapkin), left Russia for an unspecified period of time in Germany, which lasted 20 years.

[4][6][8][10][11] Once at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Hirnforschung (KWIH Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research ), Vogt and Timofeev-Resovskij began implementing the other half of the scientific agreement with Russia.

Timofeev-Resovskij's colleagues in his department included his wife Elena Aleksandrovana Timofeeva-Resovskaja, his Russian colleague Sergei Tsarapkin, the physician and radiation biologist Alexander Catsch (Katsch), the radiochemist Hans-Joachim Born, and the physicist and radiation biologist Karl Zimmer; a technical assistant, Natasha (Natalie) Kromm, was from Russia.

In addition to those already mentioned, Timofeev-Resovskij's scientific circle included the physicists William Astbury, Niels Bohr, P. A. M. Dirac, Pascual Jordan, and Erwin Schrödinger, and the biologists Torbjörn Caspersson, C. D. Darlington, Theodosij Dobzhans’skij, Boris Ephrussi, Åke Gustafsson, J.

[22] Together with the French geneticist of Russian origin, Boris Ephrussi, and with the generous support of the Rockefeller Foundation, Timofeev-Resovskij organized an annual conference on biophysics, genetics, and radiation biology.

While there, he formed a friendly relationship with the plant geneticist Nikolaj Vavilov, who was President of the Soviet Adcademy of Agricultural Sciences.

The action had been taken in response to a denunciation by M. H. Fischer, a physiologist at the Institute, who was seeking to rise in the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP, National Socialist Workers Party).

Also, once back in Russia and under the political distortions of science and agriculture due to Lysenkoism, they would, at best, have to disparage the work they had accomplished in the preceding 15 years.

That same year, the Rockefeller Foundation extended an invitation to Timofeev-Resovskij to become head of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science.

[27][28][29] Starting in 1944, in order to minimize the possibility of casualties due to Allied air raids and to also avoid falling into the hands of the Russians, all departments at the KWIH, except for Timofeev-Resovskij's were evacuated from Berlin-Buch to Dillenburg, and later on to Giessen and Göttingen.

However, Colonel General Zavenyagin recognized that Timofeev-Resovskij's experience in radiobiology and genetic effects of radiation would be useful to the Soviet atomic bomb project and ordered his release.

Timofeev-Resovskij became director of the KWIH facility in Berlin-Buch and was visited by Zavenyagin, and also by Igor’ Vasil’evich Kurchatov, chief scientist of the Soviet atomic bomb project.

However, after being denounced by a visiting scientist in an Academy of Sciences delegation from Moscow, Timofeev-Resovskij was secretly re-arrested on 14 September by an element of the NKVD different from that under Zavenyagin.

The harsh conditions of his transportation and incarceration in the labor camp contributed to a significant decline in Timofeev-Resovskij's health, including the degradation of his vision brought on by malnutrition.

[6][8][33][34] Frédéric Joliot-Curie, a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and a leader in the French Resistance during the war, visited Moscow and pleaded with Lavrentij Beria, the head of the NKVD, that Timofeev-Resovskij should be found and given meaningful work.

The argument did not fall on deaf ears, as Beria was also in charge of the Soviet atomic bomb project, and this was a top priority for Joseph Stalin.

Eventually, Timofeev-Resovskij was found, treated for his ill health brought on by his incarceration in the GULAG, and was sent, in 1947, to work at Laboratory B in Sungul', which was a ShARAShKA.

While he was still a prisoner, he headed up the biological division at the institute and was allowed to apply his prodigious scientific skills to the problems of the day.

His wife Elena, after receipt of a letter in Timofeev-Resovskij's hand, left Berlin in 1948, with their son Andrew, to join him in Sungul'.

Laboratory B was responsible for the handling, treatment, and use of radioactive products generated in reactors, as well as radiation biology, dosimetry, and radiochemistry.

Laboratory B, as a Sharashka and a facility in the Soviet atomic bomb project, was overseen by the 9th Chief Directorate of the NKVD (MVD after 1946).

[43] Also, Zimmer and Timofeev-Resovskij had put together a manuscript which was a comprehensive summary of their work and that of others on radiation-induced gene mutation and related areas; the book, Das Trefferprinzip in der Biologie, was published in Germany while they were in the Soviet Union.

817 (Ozersk), and Timofeev-Resovskij and 16 members of his department were transferred to the Ural Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg).

Among the lecturers were mathematicians Aleksei Lyapunov and Ivan Poletaev, biophysicists Lev Blumenfeldt and Mikhail Volkenstein, biochemist Simon Shnol, geneticist Raisa Berg and Vladimir Efroimson.

His wife Helena assisted him by providing her eyes to compensate for his lost vision, taking dictation, and editing his papers.

With several of his students, he also wrote his last book, Introduction to Molecular Radiobiology: Physico-Chemical Foundations [in Russian], which was published in 1981.

In 1969, a short time before receipt of his Nobel Prize, Max Delbrück traveled to the Soviet Union and unofficially met with Timofeev-Resovskij.

[54]Daniil Aleksandrovich Granin's novel Зубр (translated as The Bison: A Novel about the Scientist Who Defied Stalin [1990]) appeared in Russia in 1987, during the dawn of glasnost’ and perestrojka.

[19][26] On the Campus Berlin-Buch, a modern science, health and biotechnology park focused on biomedicine, commemoration of Timofeev-Resovskij took several forms; a new medical Genomics building was named after him, a memorial plaque was dedicated in 1992 on the gatehouse where he lived, and a sculpture of him, created by Stevan Kaehne in 2006, stands in front of the Timofeev-Resovskij Research Building.