Science and technology in Ukraine

Ilya Mechnikov (1845—1916), a laureate of the Nobel Prize, graduate of Kharkiv University and professor of zoology in Odessa University

The modern development of science and technology in Ukraine has its historical origins in the 18th and 19th centuries and is associated, first of all, with the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, University of Kyiv and University of Kharkiv. The founding of Ukraine's main research institution, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, in 1918 by Volodymyr Vernadsky marked an important milestone in the country's subsequent scientific and technological development.

Ukraine's space science advanced rapidly in the aftermath of World War II, with Korolyov, Glushko and Chelomey leading the rocket and spaceflight development in the Soviet Union during the Space Race.

Notable people

• Mikhail Ostrogradsky (1801—1862), mathematician known for the Divergence theorem and Ostrogradsky instability, among other results.
• Mykhaylo Maksymovych (1804—1873), botanist, historian, linguist, ethnographer, first rector of Kyiv University.
• Vladimir Betz (1834—1894), anatomist, histologist. See Betz cell.
• Ilya Mechnikov (1845—1916), zoologist, awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "in recognition of their work on immunity" (often considered as Russian scientist, but born and spent most of his life in current Ukraine, only 2 years in current Russia).
• Ivan Puluj (1845—1918), physicist, inventor. Early developer of the use of X-rays for medical imaging.
• Ivan Horbachevsky (1854—1942), chemist. See Xanthine oxidase.
• Volodymyr Vernadsky (1863—1945), mineralogist and geochemist, founder and first chairman of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.
• Georgy Voronoy (1868—1908), mathematician. See Voronoi diagram.
• Stephen Timoshenko (1878—1972), engineer. See Timoshenko beam theory.
• Ivan Schmalhausen (1884—1963), evolutionary biologist, zoologist, one of the central figures in the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis.
• Igor Sikorsky (1889—1972), aviation pioneer.
• Mikhail Kravchuk (also Krawtchouk) (1892—1942), mathematician. See Kravchuk polynomials, Kravchuk matrix.
• Valery Glivenko (1896—1940), mathematician. See Glivenko–Cantelli theorem, Glivenko's theorem, Glivenko–Stone theorem.
• Yuri Kondratyuk (1897—1942), mathematician, engineer. Developed the first known Lunar Orbit Rendezvous.
• Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900—1975), geneticist, evolutionary biologist. See Bateson–Dobzhansky–Muller model.
• George Kistiakowsky (1900—1982), physical chemistry professor at Harvard who participated in the Manhattan Project and later served as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Science Advisor.
• Olexander Smakula (1900—1983), physicist. Inventor of anti-reflective lens coatings based on optical interference.
• Aleksandr Markevich (1905—1999), zoologist, parasitologist, founder of the Ukrainian schools of parasitology and invertebrate zoology.
• Oleg Antonov (1906—1984), aircraft designer, and the first chief of the Antonov - a world-famous aircraft company in Ukraine.
• Sergei Korolyov (1907—1966), rocket scientist, chief designer of the Soviet space program. See Voskhod, Vostok, Soyuz.
• Valentin Glushko (1908—1989), rocket scientist. See RD-214, RD-270, NPO Energomash.
• Arkhip Lyulka (1908—1984), jet engine engineer. See Lyulka AL-21, Saturn AL-31, NPO Saturn.
• Nikolay Bogolyubov (1909—1992), mathematician and theoretical physicist known for a significant contribution to quantum field theory, classical and quantum statistical mechanics, and the theory of dynamical systems.
• Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy (1909—2001), engineer, lead developer of the Buran spacecraft programme.
• Nikolai Amosov (1913—2002), doctor, heart surgeon, inventor.
• Olexiy Ivakhnenko (1913—2007), computer scientist, mathematician. See Group method of data handling.
• Vladimir Chelomey (1914—1984), rocket scientist. See Proton rocket.
• Borys Paton (1918), mechanician, long-term chairman of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
• Vladimir Marchenko (1922), mathematician. See Marchenko–Pastur distribution.
• Victor Glushkov (1923—1982), founder of information technology in the Soviet Union, and one of the founders of cybernetics.
• Platon Kostiuk (1924—2010), physiologist, neurobiologist, electrophysiologist, and biophysicist.
• Anatoliy Skorokhod (1930—2011), mathematician. See Skorokhod integral, Skorokhod space, Skorokhod's embedding theorem.
• Oleksandr Sharkovsky (1936), mathematician. See Sharkovskii's theorem.
• Leonid Pastur (1937), mathematician. See Marchenko–Pastur distribution.
• Leonid Levin (1948), computer scientist, mathematician. See Cook–Levin theorem (NP-completeness of the boolean satisfiability problem).
• Rostislav Grigorchuk (1953), mathematician. See Grigorchuk group.
• Vladimir Drinfeld (1954), mathematician. Awarded the Fields Medal in 1990. See Quantum group, Drinfeld-Sokolov-Wilson equation.
• Yury Gogotsi (1961), chemist.
• Maryna Viazovska (1984), mathematician, solved the sphere-packing problem in dimension 8, and, in collaboration with others, in dimension 24.

External links

• Modern Ukrainian online science magazine Science Ukraine