Botanist Nikolai Vavilov

The world's largest seed bank, which botanist Nikolai Vavilov established, was located in Leningrad in 1941 during the siege of the city. As the Germans surrounded the city, forcing mass starvation, nine Soviet scientists refused to eat from the collection. They slowly died of hunger as they maintained 16 rooms of edible plants and refused to destroy "the future of Russia." The potato seeds they had in there would then go on to help spawn the world's current blight-free potato stock.