Tavriia National University

Tavriia National University [Таврійський національний університет імені В. Вернадського; Tavriiskii natsionalnyi universitet imeni V. Vernadskoho). An institution of higher learning in Simferopol; the first institution of higher learning in the Crimea, founded in 1918 as Tavriia University. At the university's founding, the members of the faculty included the scholars Mykola Andrusiv, Volodymyr Vernadsky, Boris Grekov, Volodymyr Luchytsky, and Aleksandr Palladin. The physics-mathematics department in particular has thrived remarkably during its relatively brief but high-powered existence. Its physics staff has included such world-renowned scholars as Yakov Frenkel, Mykola Krylov, Abram Yoffe, and Igor Tamm (Nobel Prize, 1958). Among the 1923 physics graduates of the Crimean University were Igor Kurchatov, the pioneer of nuclear energy in the USSR (a nuclear research institute in Moscow is named after him), and Kyrylo Synelnykov, the Ukrainian designer of charged-particle accelerators and long-term (1944–65) director of the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1921 the institution was renamed Crimean University and named in honor of Mikhail Frunze. In 1925 it was reorganized as the Crimean Pedagogical Institute. In 1972 it was renamed Simferopol University. In 1999 the institution was granted a national university status, named in honor of Volodymyr Vernadsky, and assumed its present name. By 2014 the university had fifteen faculties: history, Ukrainian philology, philosophy, administration, geography, physics, mathematics and informatics, biology and chemistry, psychology, Crimean Tatar and eastern studies, foreign languages, economics, law, Slavic studies and journalism, and physical education and sport. The student enrollment was approximately 14,000. The library had over 1,190,000 volumes in its collection.

After the Russian occupation of the Crimea in 2014, Tavriia National University (TNU) reopened in Kyiv. At that point it opened eight institutes: philology; law; geography; economics and management; history; physical education, sports, and tourism; psychology; and philosophy. Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science appointed a new rector, philologist Volodymyr Kazarin. The enrollment grew from 236 in 2016 to 3,150 in 2017. As of 2021 TNU has four institutes (management, economics, and nature management; humanities; philology and journalism; and municipal management and economy) and operates Kyiv College of Municipal Services. In 2020 TNU opened a new international research center: the Ukraine-China-US International Education and Research Center. The university publishes Vcheni zapysky TNU imeni V.I. Vernads'koho in several series, including administration; history; law; technology; economy and management; philology and social communications; psychology; and Crimean Tatar philology, turkology, and Oriental studies.

Serhiy Bilenky

[This article was updated in 2021.]