Arkhimovych, Oleksander

Arkhimovych, Oleksander [Архімович, Олександер; Arximovyč], b 23 April 1892 in Novozybkov, Chernihiv gubernia (now Briansk oblast, Russian Federation), d 19 January 1984 in Rosendale, New York State, USA. Botanist specializing in plant cultivation and selection, graduate of Kyiv University (1918) and the Kyiv Polytechnical Institute (1922). Arkhimovych worked as a researcher at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (1919–23) and taught at Kyiv Agricultural Institute, Bila Tserkva Agricultural Institute, and Zhytomyr Agricultural Institute (1934–43). As post-war displaced person, he emigrated to Germany, where he taught at the Ukrainian Technical and Husbandry Institute (1945–8), then to Spain (1948–52), and in 1953, to the United States of America. Arkhimovych was a full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States (president of the academy in 1962–70). In the 1950s and 1960s he worked closely with the Institute for the Study of the USSR in Munich. He published studies on plant biology, the cultivation and selection of field crops (particularly sugar beets), the geography of field crops in Ukraine, and agriculture in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]