Briefly about Ukraine Science and Technology

Read about Ukraine Science and Technology

Ukraine has contributed many outstanding scientists to the world.

In the 15-17th centuries they were the talented physician Yury Drohobich and linguists L. Zuzania and P. Berynda.

The beginning of the 17th century was also marked by the creative activity of the prominent linguist M. Smotrytsky whose “Slavic Grammar” became the basis of grammars of many Slavic languages.

In the 18th century the main scientific centre of Ukraine was the Kyivo-Mohyla Academy whose most famous representatives of that time were N. Maksymovich and O. Shumlyansky.

The 19th and 20th centuries produced such outstanding scientists as the mathematicians M. Ostrogradsky and A. Pohorelov, the linguists O. Bodynsky, A. Potebnya, the historians V. Antonovich, M. Hrushevsky and D. Bahaliy, the orientalist A. Krumsky, the geologist P. Tutkovsky, the physician V. Obraztsov, M. Strazhesko, V. Filatov, the lawyer M. Vasylenko and many others.

The Academy of Sciences was founded  by Hetman Skoropadcky in 1918. Since 1994 it has been called the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Ukrainians are proud of the fact that only several months after the nucleus of the atom was split by the English physicists G. Cockroft and E. Walton in 1932, the same result was achieved in one of the laboratories of Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology headed by I. Kurchatov and A. Ioffe.

Nobel Prize laureate Academician Lev Landau worked in Kharkiv for many years, heading the Institute of Physics and Technology.

Another Nobel Prize laureate Ilya Mechnikov was born in Kharkiv region, studied in Kharkiv National University and worked there for a long time.

The first electronic computing machine in Europe was designed by our countryman S. Lebedev in 1951.

The famous astronomer Academician Mykola Barabashov worked in Kharkiv Observatory and made significant discoveries concerning Mars, Moon and Venus.

Ukrainian scientists made great contribution into the development of space exploration. The Southern Machine Building plant and Kharkiv “Khartron” designed and launched hundreds of artificial Earth satellites including the famous “Zenith”.

The world famous Ukrainian scientists are Volodymir Vernadsky and Yevhen and Boris Paton.

Volodymyr Vernadsky was the first President of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He was a prominent naturalist, mineralogist, the founder of geochemistry and biochemistry, the creator of the biosphere theory. Together with Oleksander Fersman he was the first to suggest the use of radioactivity in studying geological processes. He was also the first to estimate the age of the most ancient elements of the Earth surface as being 4.5 billion years old.

Yevhen Paton was an outstanding Ukrainian constructor, famous for his contribution in bridge-building and welding. He studied Engineering in Dresden (Germany) and St. Petersburg. In 1904 became a professor of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute where he headed the bridge-testing laboratory. Evhen Paton designed over 35 bridges, including the famous bridge across the Dnipro River that was named after him. He is also considered to be the father of electronic welding. The Institute of Electronic Welding the director of which Evhen Paton had been till his very death, developed his theory and mastered the highly productive hidden welding technique which is used  world-wide. His son Boris succeeded him and became an outstanding scientist, too. For many years he headed the institute founded by his farter and was the President of Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The Ukrainian Institute of Electronic Welding and the American aviation and space firm “Pratt and Wiltny” established a joint research centre and an enterprise to develop the technologies of new materials, using the technique of speed electronic beam evaporation and vacuum condensation. They also founded a joint venture “Paton-Weld” to develop the Ukrainian technologies of permanent metal, metal-non-metal, ceramic and other combinations, and to market them in the USA and other countries.