Mykhailo Maksymovych

[2] He contributed to the life sciences, especially botany and zoology, and to linguistics, folklore, ethnography, history, literary studies, and archaeology.

Maksymovych was born into an old Zaporozhian Cossack family which owned a small estate on Mykhailova Hora near Prokhorivka, Zolotonosha county in Poltava Governorate (now in Cherkasy Oblast) in Left-bank Ukraine.

(This university had been established by the Russian government to reduce Polish influence in Ukraine and Maksymovych was, in part, an instrument of this policy).

Maksymovych elaborated wide-ranging plans for the expansion of the university which eventually included attracting eminent Ukrainians and Russians like, Mykola Kostomarov, and Taras Shevchenko to teach there.

In 1847, he was deeply affected by the arrest, imprisonment, and exile of the members of the Pan-Slavic Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, many of whom, like the poet Taras Shevchenko, were his friends or students.

During his final years, Maksymovych devoted himself more and more to history and engaged in extensive debates with the Russian historians Mikhail Pogodin and Mykola Kostomarov.

In 1833 in Moscow, he published The Book of Naum About God's Great World, which was a popularly written exposition of geology, the solar system, and the universe, in religious garb for the common folk.

Although this Maksymovychivka looked quite similar to Russian, it was a first step towards an independent orthography, based on phonetics which was eventually proposed by Maksymovych's younger contemporary, Panteleimon Kulish.

He was critical of the Normanist theory which traced Kyivan Rus' to Scandinavian origins, preferring to stress its Slavic roots.

Maksymovych argued that the Kyivan lands were never completely de-populated, even after the Mongol invasions, and that they had always been inhabited by Ruthenians and their direct ancestors.

With regard to Slavic studies, Maksimovich remarked upon the various theses of the Czech philologist, Josef Dobrovský and the Slovak scholar, Pavel Jozef Šafárik.

Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Croatian scholar Vatroslav Jagić thought Maksymovych's scheme to have been a solid contribution to Slavic philology.

Maksymovych also made some critical remarks on Pavel Jozef Šafárik's map of the Slavic world, wrote on the Lusatian Sorbs, and on Polish proverbs.

He greatly influenced many of his younger contemporaries including the poet Taras Shevchenko, the historian Mykola Kostomarov, the writer Panteleimon Kulish, and many others.