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March 10, 1863

Volodymyr Lypsky, one of the men who helped organize the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences was born on March 10, 1863, in Samostrily, near Novhorod-Volynskyi in Volhynia.

A botanist by training, he graduated from Kyiv University in 1886, worked in its gardens, and then was called to St. Petersburg to serve at the Imperial Botanical Garden. He was by no means the stereotypical sedentary puttering gardener, but traveled widely, conducting expeditions to Central Asia, the Far East, Africa and the Americas.

Lypsky identified four new plant families (genera) and over 220 new species, studied the Black Sea's marine vegetation and investigated the radioactive mineral springs of the Zhytomyr region. He published scientific accounts of the flora of Ukraine, Bessarabia, Caucasia (a multi-volume work that appeared over 1899-1902), Central Asia (another large reference work, 1902-1905), Tunisia, Algeria and Indonesia.

Following the revolution of 1917, Lypsky returned to Kyiv, where he helped establish the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Following the Bolshevik consolidation of power, in 1921, the institution was renamed the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and Lypsky served as its vice-president.

In 1922, amidst budget cuts that slashed the number of its associates, Lypsky was appointed the academy's president. From 1924 to 1928, he oversaw the institution's brief efflorescence, as Mykhailo Hrushevsky returned to assume the chair of modern Ukrainian history, and the academy greatly expanded its work and publishing.

In 1928, the regime's control over the academy increased, and a campaign of brutal interference in its organization and scholarship mounted as the aim of transforming it into a Soviet institution imbued with the official ideology. That year, Lypsky quit the presidency to assume directorship of the Odessa Botanical Garden. He died in Odessa on February 24, 1937.

Sources: "Academy of Sciences," "Lypsky, Volodymyr," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vols. 1, 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984, 1993).

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 10, 1996, No. 10, Vol. LXIV

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