Ukrainian names in world science

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Rich is Ukraine in talented people, men of genius, de­voted heart and soul to their native land. Scientists and inventors, engineers and architects, singers and composers, writers and poets did their best to raise national science, culture, art to the highest world standards. They did it in and out of this country, in ma­ny parts of the whole wide world.

The sons and daughters of this blessed land made an end­less row of contributions to other people's civilizations, stimulating their growth, enriching their spiritual world, raising their life standards and well-being. The Ukrainian people's cultural and economic ties with other nations went down in history for many centuries.

Yuri Kotermak — named Drohobych after his native land, — a well-known astronomer, philosopher and medicus, Rector of Bologna University in the 15th century, was one of the first to pave the way into world science.

Historical events, tragic, dramatic, unforeseen and unfa­vourable for the gifted people's descendants made many Ukrainians either leave their Homeland, or stay away in other countries. Absorbing other nations' culture and science, language and mode of life, Ukraine's intellectuals spared no effort to advance the peoples who sheltered them, gave them a chance to display their best natural qualities, let them contribute to the realm of knowledge and wisdom. America and Canada, Great Britain and Australia, Germany and France, Italy, as well as many other countries of East and West benefited and continue to benefit from Ukraine's descendants, from their strength of mind and intellect. Within their native land and outside its borders Ukrainian men of genius have been restlessly making contributions to world science.

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To mention but a few we shall remember the names of Stepan Tymoshenko in the USA whose works Strength of Materials and The History of the Strength of Materials have be­come textbooks for the generations of students, Ivan Puluy in Austro-Hungary and Czechoslovakia whose inventions preceded those of Wilhelm Roentgen, as well as many others.

There were such Ukrainians in our land whose discoveries paved the way into outer space, whose inventions promoted the further steps in space exploration: — a hero of the 1812 War General Olexandr Zassyadko, a freedom fighter, member of Narodna Volya (People's Will) Mykola Kybalchych, Kostyantyn Tsiolkovsky whose ancestor was Severyn Nalyvaiko.

Quite a special place belongs to the man of dramatic fate Yuri Kondratyuk (Olexandr Shargey) whose scientific exploit was duly appreciated by Academician Boris Rauschenbach. A man of tragic circumstances himself Rauschenbach wrote that it was Kondratyuk who suggested the idea of creating a base round the Moon and not on the Earth, to ensure the rocket starts for the Moon. Kondratyuk's idea was later realized in the Appollo flight programme many years after the author had been killed in action at the front.

Among other brilliant scientists who were working in this field and who gained breath-taking results were Serhiy Korolyov, a constructor of cosmic systems, Academician Arkhyp Lyulka, a turbojet engines constructor and others.

Very near cosmic research stands another flying branch of scientific investigation — aviation and its affiliated domain hydronavigation. Most famous names here are Fedir Tereshchenko who constructed a monoplane with parameters far surpassing the existing models (as far back as 1913) and Dmytro Hryhorovych, a graduate of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, who constructed a seaplane (airplane rising from and alighting on water) for the first time in aeriel navigation. One might go on and on describing contributions made by Ukrainian scientists.

The above mentioned names are only a few stars in the constellation of genius representing Ukrainian science in the world.