Korchak-Chepurkivsky, Ovksentii

Korchak-Chepurkivsky, Ovksentii [Корчак-Чепурківський, Овксентій; Korčak-Čepurkivs'kyj, Ovksentij], b 28 February 1857 in Kostiantynohrad, Poltava gubernia, d 27 November 1947 in Kyiv. Hygienist and epidemiologist; from 1921 full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR; father of Yurii Korchak-Chepurkivsky. After graduating from Kharkiv University (1883) and working as a sanitation and public-health physician in several gubernias, from 1903 he was a lecturer and then professor of hygiene at Kyiv University. During the Hetman government he headed the sanitation department of the Ministry of Health and served as chairman of the medical faculty of Kyiv University; while under the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic he served as minister of national health. He held the Chair of Public Health (renamed the Chair of Hygiene and Sanitation) at the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1921–34) and chaired a department of the academy’s Institute of Demography and Sanitation Statistics (1934–8). He also served as the academy’s permanent secretary (1928–34). His numerous publications deal with diphtheria epidemics, the antagonistic relationship between diphtheria and other infectious childhood diseases, sanitation, and the history of zemstvo medicine. In 1927 he proposed the first systematic Ukrainian nomenclature of diseases.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]