Vladimir Pavlovich Efroimson (Russian: Владимир Павлович Эфроимсон; 21 November 1908, Moscow – 21 July 1989, Moscow) was one of the most prominent Soviet geneticists, a former student of Nikolai Koltsov, who was among the scientists who had to struggle against the persecution of geneticists in the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union.

Efroimson was born at the Lubyanka All-Russia Insurance Company revenue house in Moscow (which was turned into the headquarters of the Soviet secret police after the October Revolution), the son of a banker and a nurse.

In 1929 he was expelled from the university for his speech against the persecution of his teacher Sergei Chetverikov, the founder of population genetics.

In 1939-1941 he worked for the All-Ukrainian Silkworm Station in Merefa and obtained his Kandidat degree from Kharkov University (1941).

[1][3] During World War II Efroimson worked on the warfront as an epidemiologist, paramedic, and a German-speaking intelligence member from August 1942 through November 1945 and was awarded military decorations.

In August 1948, after the infamous VASKhNIL session there Lysenkoists destroyed scientific genetics Efroimson was stripped of his doctoral degree and expelled from his teaching position for translating into Russian, a negative review of Trofim Lysenko's work published by Theodosius Dobzhansky.

[1] Efroimson entered the annals of Russian science as an outstanding researcher, but also as an unblinking fighter for the truth, an uncompromising opponent of anti-scientific directions in biology, an ardent advocate of genetics and the moral standard of a true scientist.