Founder of biogeochemistry who reconceived the Earth through the biosphere and noosphere
“Everything good in my life I owe to Natasha. We lived 56 years soul to soul, thought to thought.” — diary entry on the day of his wife's death, 1943.
Starting as a mineralogist, he founded the new science of biogeochemistry and formulated the concepts of the biosphere and noosphere, making him a forerunner of modern Earth system science. He served as the first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1918) and organized the Soviet Radium Institute, laying the institutional groundwork for early Soviet uranium and atomic research. Once a Kadet Central Committee member and deputy education minister in the Provisional Government, he stayed in the USSR under the Academy's protection and won the Stalin Prize in 1943.
Career timeline
1898–1911Professor of Mineralogy, Moscow University
1906–1917Kadet Central Committee member & State Council deputy
1917Deputy Minister of Education, Provisional Government
1918–1921First President, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences
1922–1939Director, Radium Institute of the USSR
1927–1945Director, Biogeochemical Laboratory, Academy of Sciences
The last hetman of Ukraine, installed under German occupation in 1918
On 29 April 1918 in Kyiv, the All-Ukrainian Congress of Landowners rose and unanimously acclaimed Pavlo Skoropadskyi as Hetman of Ukraine with shouts of 'Long live the Hetman!'
A Ukrainian aristocrat and tsarist lieutenant general who commanded a corps in the First World War. In April 1918, backed by the German army that occupied Ukraine after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, he overthrew the socialist Central Rada in a coup and was proclaimed Hetman of the Ukrainian State. During his eight-month rule he founded the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, established universities, and built diplomatic ties, but his pro-landlord agrarian policy and the German occupiers' forced grain requisitions provoked widespread peasant resistance. When Germany collapsed in November 1918, Symon Petliura's Anti-Hetman Uprising drove him from power; he abdicated in December and spent the rest of his life in German exile, refusing to collaborate with the Nazis.
Career timeline
1893Commissioned as an officer in the Chevalier Guard regiment
1904–1905Commanded Cossack units in the Russo-Japanese War, decorated for bravery
1912Promoted to major general, aide-de-camp to Nicholas II
1914–1916Commanded cavalry divisions in WWI, promoted to lieutenant general
1917Commander of 34th Army Corps, Ukrainised it into the 1st Ukrainian Corps
1917.10Elected Otaman of the Free Cossacks
1918.04–12Hetman of the Ukrainian State
1919–1945Exile in Germany, led the Hetmanite movement
Ukrainian nationalist leader who commanded the Sich Riflemen and built the UVO and OUN
Rotterdam, 23 May 1938: a Ukrainian-style box of chocolates handed over by his trusted contact Pavel Sudoplatov concealed a time bomb made in Moscow.
A Ukrainian military and political leader from Zashkiv in Austrian Galicia. After captivity in Russia during the First World War, he organized the Sich Riflemen in Kyiv in 1917 and became a leading commander of the Army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Following defeat in the independence war, he led the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) in exile and united several nationalist groups into the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in Vienna in 1929, becoming its first leader. He connected émigré organizations across Europe and North America and sought international support for Ukrainian independence, but was assassinated in Rotterdam in 1938 by a bomb delivered by NKVD operative Pavel Sudoplatov, who had infiltrated the OUN. In 1929 he obtained Lithuanian citizenship and a passport, giving his émigré activity a legal basis, while his national and political identity and the aim of his movement remained consistently Ukrainian independence.
Career timeline
1914–1915Served in the Austro-Hungarian army; captured by Russia after the Battle of Makivka
1917–1920Organized and commanded the Sich Riflemen of the Ukrainian People’s Republic
1920–1929Cofounded and led the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO)
1929–1938Founding leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)
1938.05Assassinated in Rotterdam in Pavel Sudoplatov’s bombing operation
