Valery Nikolayevich Soyfer (Russian: Валерий Николаевич Сойфер), born in 1936 in Gorky is a Russian-American biophysicist, molecular geneticist, historian of science, human rights advocate, and humanitarian.
Valery's brother Vladimir (1930–2016) was a nuclear physicist and developed the most sensitive method of measuring radioactivity in oceans and underground water.
[17] Soyfer published several monographs in the fields that he investigated: “Biophysics” (translation by V. Soyfer and V. Otroshchenko from English into Russian, 1964, Moscow), “Molecular Mechanisms of Mutagenesis” (1970, Moscow), "Chemical Basis of Mutation" (1975, New York), “Die Molekulare Mechanismen der Mutagenese und Reparatur” (1976.
During his scientific career, Soyfer paid special attention to the popularization of the successes of modern science and published many articles and books.
Among them was the first book on genetics in the USSR (after the nearly 25-year ban on genetics established in the USSR by Joseph Stalin) "Arithmetic of Heredity" (1969, translated into Estonian in 1973), "Repair Systems of Cells" (1970, translated into Vietnamese in 1971), "Contemporary Problems of Biology" (1974), "Molecules of Living Cells" (1975), "Lenin’s Ghost Adopted Him (A Documentary Thriller about One Lenin Prize Laureate and Soviet Geneticists)" (2006), "By Personal Order of Comrade Stalin" (2007) and others.
From 1975, Soyfer joined those intellectuals in the USSR who were involved in loosening of strict political control of the life of society and who advocated the establishment of more democratic principles in the country.
The Soviet authorities, after recognizing Soyfer's participation in this activity, first removed him from his position as Scientific Director of his institute in 1976, then dismissed him from his chairmanship of his Laboratory a year later.
Together with writer Georgi Vladimov, Andrei Sakharov's wife, Yelena Bonner, USSR Chess champion Boris Gulko, he signed many petitions to Soviet and international leaders and organizations in support of political prisoners Anatoly Shcharansky, Yuri Orlov, Sergei Kovalev and others.
Beginning in 1986, Ronald Reagan appealed to Mikhail Gorbachev several times to grant Soyfer and his family permission to emigrate to the United States, with his appeal granted after the third attempt, when Soyfer received the opportunity to accept invitations from several US Universities and arrived in the United States on May 1, 1988.
He supported the actions of the American financier and philanthropist, George Soros, in support of Russian intellectuals and became a member of the Board of Directors of the International Science Foundation (ISF) in 1992-1995 and the chairman of the board and the General Director of the International Soros Science Education Program (ISSEP) in 1994–2004.
These programs supported financially more than 120,000 scientists, professors and teachers in the countries of the former USSR, more than 880,000 high school students took part in the Soros Olympiads.