Orlai, Ivan

Orlai, Ivan [Орлай, Іван; Orlaj], b 1770 in Palad, Transcarpathia, d 11 March 1829 in Odesa. Medical scholar and educator. He studied in Lviv, Budapest, and Vienna, graduated from the Saint Petersburg Medico-Surgical Academy (1793), and then practiced medicine, served as scientific secretary of the academy (1808–17), and helped edit its Pharmacopea castrensis Ruthenica. He directed the Bezborodko Gymnasium in Nizhyn (1821–6) (see Nizhyn Lyceum) and the Richelieu Lyceum (1826–9). A man of the Enlightenment, he believed in education as the key to social and moral progress and advocated a unified system of general education for all the estates in the Russian Empire. His biography, by T. Baitsura, was published in 1977.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]