Biology
Biology (біологія; biolohiia). A complex science of living nature that deals with life in all its manifestations and levels of organization from the molecular or subcellular to the supraorganic or population level.
The beginnings. Biological information about Ukraine’s flora and fauna can be found in the works of ancient and medieval writers, the travel accounts of the 16th–17th century (Siegmund von Herberstein, Marcin Kromer, Michalon Lituanus, Guillaume le Vasseur de Beauplan, and others), medical manuals, and herbals. Later, the biological works of German, Austrian, and Polish scholars (Baltazar Hacquet, H. Junker, Gabriel Rzączński, and others) gave some information about Ukraine and paved the way for the more systematic scientific works on biology written in the 18th century by such authors as Martyn Terekhovsky, Peter Pallas, Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin, and Johann Anton Güldenstädt. In the 19th century the development of biology in Ukraine was assured by the formation of new universities and scientific research institutions in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Lviv.
Biology was the responsibility of the departments of natural sciences at Kyiv University and Kyiv Polytechnical Institute. The Kyiv Society of Naturalists was established at Kyiv University in 1869, where it published its Zapiski. In 1896 the Bacteriological Institute was founded in Kyiv. At the turn of the century several noted biologists worked in Kyiv: the anatomist and histologist Volodymyr Bets; the cytologist Sergei Navashin; the histologists Oleksii Ivakin and Fedir Lomynsky; the microbiologists Grigorii Minkh, A. Krainsky, and Feofil Yanovsky; the physiologist Oleksander Leontovych; the pathologists-anatomists Volodymyr Vysokovych, Pavlo Kucherenko, and S. Kushakevych; the botanists Opanas Rohovych, Ivan Shmalhauzen, Sr., and N. Tsinger; the founder of zootechny in Ukraine, M. Chervinsky; the embryologist Aleksandr Kovalevsky; and S. Zernov, who described the biocenosis of the Black Sea.
In Kharkiv, biological research was conducted at Kharkiv University, the Kharkiv Veterinary Institute, the Kharkiv Society of Naturalists, the Society of Scientific Medicine and Hygiene, the Medical Association, the Bacteriological Station (established in 1887), the Pasteur Institute (1887), which became the Bacteriological Institute in 1908, and elsewhere. A number of prominent scientists worked in Kharkiv: the botanist-microbiologist L. Tsenkovsky, who laid the foundations of the theory of bacterial mutation; the plant physiologist Viacheslav Zalesky; the embryologist Zosym Striltsov; the pathologists-anatomists Vladimir Krylov and Mykola Melnikov-Razvedenkov; the biochemist Oleksander Danylevsky; the endocrinologist and parasitologist Vasyl Danylevsky; the bacteriologists K. Yelenevsky and S. Kotsevaliv; the botanist and parasitologist Andrei Krasnov; the anatomists Oleksii Bilousov and Volodymyr Vorobiov; the histologist M. Kulchytsky; the pathologist-anatomist-zoologist O. Ostapenko; and others.
Odesa University and its society of naturalists, which published Zapiski, boasted several famous biologists among their members: Professor Illia Mechnikov (the author of the theory of phagocytes and later the director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris) and the microbiologists Mykola Hamaliia (author of well-known works in virology and immunology, discoverer of bacteriophage, organizer of the Odesa Bacteriological Station in 1886—first of its kind in the Russian Empire [see Pasteur station]—and of the Odesa Bacteriological and Physiological Institute), Yakiv Bardakh, A. Verigo, Ye. Brusylovsky, M. Zilynsky, and others.
The botanists J. Sziwerek and I. Szultes and the zoologists B. Dybowski and J. Nusbaum-Hiliarowicz worked at Lviv University, while the botanist Ostap Voloshchak worked at the Lviv Polytechnical Institute. The Ukrainian biochemist Ivan Ya. Horbachevsky synthesized uric acid from urea and glycine in 1882 and studied the exchange of purines at Vienna University and later worked at Prague University.
1920s–1930s. Biology in Ukraine kept pace with the general development of the life sciences and reached a significant level during this period. Along with the work of numerous departments of various higher schools such as universities and medical institutes, zootechnical institutes, veterinary institutes, and agricultural institutes, an important role was played by the Botanical Section of the Agricultural Scientific Committee (1919–27), which was directed by Oleksander Yanata. Biological research at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences began in 1919: the Institute of Microbiology, the botanical and zoological sections, and the chairs of agricultural biology and experimental zoology were established. The Institute of Biochemistry (later Institute of Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR), which published Naukovi zapysky from 1925, the Ukrainian Protozoology Institute (Kharkiv 1923), the Ukrainian Institute of Pathology and Anatomy (Kharkiv 1925) with its Ukrainian Association of Pathologists (1926), the Ukrainian Sanitary-Bacteriological Institute, and a number of other scientific research institutes, particularly in applied botany and zootechny, worked in conjunction with the Academy.
An important role in the development of biology in Ukraine was played by the biological stations, particularly the Dnipro River Biological Station (1909) and the Sevastopol Biological Station (1871), and by the research conducted at nature preserves and at zoological gardens and parks and at botanical gardens, which led to the systematic investigation of the flora and fauna of Ukraine and of the biological processes in particular regions having specific characteristics. This work became increasingly tied to experimental research in applied biology, particularly in pomology, plant acclimatization, and genetics. In the 1920s and early 1930s the Institute of Linguistics of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (now Institute of Linguistics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) published S. Panochini’s Slovnyk biolohichnoï terminolohiï (Dictionary of Biological Terminology, 1931), Fedir Polonsky’s Slovnyk pryrodnychoï terminolohiï (Dictionary of Naturalist Terminology, 1928), and a series of zoological, botanical, medical, and agricultural dictionaries that contained a great deal of biological information.
Beginning in the mid-1930s, the scientific research institutions in Ukraine were restructured. Research in biology was concentrated basically in the scientific research institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR: the division of biological sciences included the Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, the Institute of Zoology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, the Institute of Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, the Institute of Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, and the Institute of Microbiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In this period academic freedom was curtailed, and scientific work was subjected to Communist Party directives and to Marxist-Leninist ideology. The methodology of dialectical materialism was adopted as the foundation of scientific work. Much attention was devoted to the problems of Darwinism and the theory of evolution, particularly to the main tendencies, laws, and facts of the evolutionary process. According to Party instructions, scientific research was subjected to a practical, utilitarian approach.
The most important publications in biology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR were Ukraïns'kyi botanichnyi zhurnal (known in the 1930s as Zhurnal Instytutu botaniky VUAN), Ukraïns'kyi zoolohichnyi zhurnal, Zbirnyk prats' Zoolohichnoho muzeiu VUAN (Collection of the Works of the Zoological museum of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences), Zbirnyk prats' Biolohichnoho instytutu im. F. Omel'chenka (Collection of the Works of the F. Omelchenko Biological Institute), Zbirnyk prats' (Collection of Works) of the Dnipro River Biological Station and the Trudy of other biological stations, Mikrobiolohichnyi zhurnal, and Ukraïns'kyi biokhimichnyi zhurnal.
The more outstanding biologists who worked in Ukraine during this period and were associated with the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR were the microbiologists Ovksentii Korchak-Chepurkivsky, Danylo Zabolotny (one of the founders of the International Association of Microbiology), Lev Tarasevych, Marko Neshchadymenko, Lev Hromashevsky (epidemiologist), Petro Savytsky, Viktor Drobotko, B. Isachenko, M. Revo, O. Bershova, and O. Sydorenko; the morphologists Mykola Melnikov-Razvedenkov, Volodymyr Vorobiov, Oleksander Cherniakhivsky, Pavlo Kucherenko, M. Lysenkov, and Oleksandra Smyrnova-Zamkova; the geneticists H. Karpechenko (winner of the Rockefeller Award), T. Dobzhansky, and I. Ahol; the physiologists Oleksander Bohomolets, Vasyl Danylevsky, Mykola Strazhesko, Oleksii Krontovsky, Vsevolod Chahovets, M. Pavliv, Oleksander Nahorny, Dmytro Svyrenko, Rostyslav Kavetsky, Oleksander Leontovych, Valentyna Radzymovska, Nina Medvedeva, and Ye. Zankevych; the biochemists Aleksandr Palladin, M. Hatsaniuk, S. Gzhytsky, and Viktor Kovalsky; the botanists Volodymyr Lypsky, Oleksander Yanata, Mykola H. Kholodny (developer of the phytohormonal theory of tropisms), Volodymyr Liubymenko, Oleksander Fomin, Yurii Vysotsky, Yevhen Lavrenko, Dmytro Zerov, and M. Popov; the paleobotanists Afrykan Kryshtofovych and M. Persydsky; and many others. The physiologist Yevhen Votchal worked in agricultural biology, and Volodymyr Symyrenko and Mykola Kashchenko (embryologist and acclimatizer) worked in pomology and acclimatization. Andrii Sapiehin developed new varieties of wheat. Trokhym Lysenko was famous for his experiments in genetics and selection. The better-known zoologists were Ivan Shmalhauzen, Mykola Sharleman, L. Lebedynsky, D. Beling, Oleksander Nikolsky, V. Khranevych, Oleksii Myhulin, Oleksander Brauner, Pavlo Svyrydenko, Mykola Hryshko, and Yakiv Roll. I. Bilanovsky, S. Paramoniv, L. Reinhard, T. Zabudko-Reinhard, and A. Shevchenko (who studied blood- carrying mosquitoes and malaria) were noted entomologists. Oleksander P. Markevych, V. Myronova, M. Malevytska, and others specialized in parasitology. Mikhail Ivanov developed new varieties of sheep and hogs.
The 1920s in Western Ukraine also witnessed a rapid development in biological sciences. Scientists in the field were organized in the Mathematical–Natural Science–Medical Section and the Natural Science Museum of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. Among the museum’s scientists were the botanist Mykola Melnyk and the entomologist V. Lazorko. The following biologists worked at the Bacteriological-Chemical Institute of the Shevchenko Scientific Society: Maksym Muzyka, Leontii Maksymonko, Volodymyr Shchurovsky, Yu. Kordiuk, and P. Kholodny. Some important zoologists were V. Brygider, Oleksander Tysovsky, R. Weigel, Ya. Hirshler, and Edvard Zharsky. Among the botanists, S. Kulchynsky, O. Mryts, and H. Kozii deserve to be mentioned. The anatomist and etiologist Arsenii Starkov and biologist Vsevolod Harmashiv worked as émigrés in Latvia and Czechoslovakia, and the entomologist Alexander Granovsky worked in the United States of America.
After 1945. In 1945 biologists resumed their work at the various institutions in Soviet Ukraine. The science departments at universities, the scientific research institutes, and the departments of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR were expanded. Ukrainian biologists participated in international conferences and in the development of various international biological programs with such themes as ‘Man and the Biosphere.’ An important contribution to marine biology was made by the Sevastopol Biological Station, which in 1963 was reorganized into the Institute of the Biology of Southern Seas of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, encompassing also the Kara Dag and Odesa biological stations. The following hydrobiologists worked at the institute: V. Greze, Viktor Zaika, Tamara Petipa (productivity of marine ecosystems), K. Hailov, A. Kovaliv, E. Bytiukov (bioluminescence), M. Kysileva, A. Hutnyk (bottom flora and fauna), and Yuvenalii Zaitsev. The Kara Dag Biological Station conducts research on dolphins. In 1961 electron-microscopic research began at the Ukrainian Academy of Agricultural Sciences and then at other scientific research institutes. It was conducted by O. Suliaeva, S. Lebedev, Ye. Kordium, Liudmyla Ostrovska, and others. In 1972 the Institute for the Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine was established at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR; Mykola S. Pushkar, A. Bilous, and V. Luhovy worked at the institute. James Watson’s and Francis Crick’s discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) led to the founding of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in 1973. Hennadii Matsuka, V. Vasylchenko, V. Osyka, S. Serebriany, Serhii Hershenzon, Valerii Lishko, Volodymyr Belitser, and Maksym Huly investigate the structure and function of DNA and RNA, the processing of genetic information, etc, at this institute.
Genetic research, which was constricted in 1940–60 by the imposed theories of Ivan Michurin and Trokhym Lysenko, alter expanded again. Lysenko believed that inheritance is determined by external factors—changes in the environment and the breeding conditions—and, furthermore, that humans are capable of transforming nature; this belief coincided with Communist ideology and satisfied the demands of the Communist Party. The theories of Gregor Mendel and Thomas Hunt Morgan were condemned as ‘unscientific and idealistic,’ and the laboratories of cytology, histology, and embryology at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and other scientific research institutions were abolished because of their ‘un-Michurinian approach to the problems of biology.’ Ukrainian geneticists who did not accept these beliefs were persecuted and destroyed, among them, H. Karpechenko, Volodymyr Symyrenko, Nikolai Vavilov, K. Fylypchenko, Hryhorii A. Levytsky, I. Ahol, and Andrii Lazarenko.
With the removal of Trokhym Lysenko from the presidency of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the directorship of the Genetics Institute in Moscow in the 1960s, the concepts of Western geneticists became current in Ukraine among such scientists as Volodymyr Zosymovych, T. Borysenko, I. Shevtsov, N. Navalikhina, S. Mashtalir, and B. Matseliukh. Genetic engineering was developing and was represented by such researchers as A. Aleksandrov, S. Maliuta, B. Levenko, V. Morhun, and V. Kordium. An important contribution to the development of biology was made by the botanists and specialists in floristics: Dmytro Zerov, Yevhen Bordzylovsky, Yevhen Lavrenko, Mykhailo Kotov, O. Visiulina, M. Klokov (see Mykhailo Dolengo), D. Dobrochaeva, Andrii Barbarych, Ye. Wulf, V. Chopyk, M. Smyk, O. Lypa, K. Malynovsky, H. Bilyk, and O. Stoiko; their work is summed up in the classic 12-volume Flora URSR (The Flora of the Ukrainian SSR, 1926–65) and the guides to the plants of Ukraine (1965), the Crimea, the Carpathian Mountains, etc. The algologists Oleksander Topachevsky, N. Kondrateva, and Z. Asaul, as well as the mycologists Mykola Pidoplichko, Ye. Koval, I. Dudka, O. Oksiiuk, N. Masiuk, and Vira Bilai, deserve to be mentioned for their contributions to biology.
Other scientists who advanced the development of the biological sciences are the microbiologists D. Zatula, Valerii Smirnov, E. Andreiuk, Lev Rubenchyk (soil microbiology), K. Beltiukova, R. Hvozdiak (phytopathogenic microbes), and Yu. Malashenko; the virologists A. Bobyr and Semen Moskovets; the hydromicrobiologists A. Rodina and O. Bershova; the cytologists Yakiv Modylevsky, E. Kordium, P. Sydorenko, V. Maliuk, Kh. Rudenko, and I. Ostapenko (ultrastructure); the embryologists V. Bannykova, A. Dzevaltovsky, V. Soroka, Z. Kots, Dmytro Hrodzinsky and Andrii Hrodzinsky, Arkadii Okanenko, and Liudmyla Ostrovska; the agricultural chemists Aleksandr Dushechkin, Petro Vlasiuk; and the ecologists Yurii Sheliah-Sosonko, H. Poplavska, Ye. Kondratiuk, and Mykhailo Holubets. The problems of exobiology were investigated by Kostiantyn Sytnyk, S. Uvarova, and M. Nechytailo. The leading contributors to the science of zoology in the postwar Ukrainian SSR were Mykola Savchuk, Volodymyr Kasianenko, Vadym Topachevsky, M. Bily, B. Dombrovsky, H. Himmelraikh, S. Manzii, Ivan Pidoplichko (the moving force behind the monumental 40-volume Fauna Ukraïny [The Fauna of Ukraine]); the ornithologists O. Kistiakivsky, I. Volchanetsky, and F. Strautman; the ichthyologists Vasyl Movchan, O. Ambroz, and F. Zambryborshch; the entomologists I. Bilanovsky, V. Sovynsky, Ye. Savchenko, Yevhen Zvirozomb-Zubovsky, and V. Vasyliev; the hydrobiologists Ya. Tseeb, L. Sirenko, V. Kuzmenko, Volodymyr Vodianytsky (productivity of the Black Sea), V. Zats (water restoration), V. Maliuk, H. Zuiev, and H. Shkorbatov (ecophysiology of freshwater animals); and the parasitologists Oleksander P. Markevych, V. Trach, V. Zdun, and I. Bezpalny.
The Institute of Zoology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR became the main center for parasitology in the whole Soviet Union. The phytohelminthologist O. Ustinov, the physiologists Olekdander Makarchenko, Platon Kostiuk (electromicroscopic research), O. Kryshtal, M. Shuba, Volodymyr Skok, V. Storozhuk, M. Hurevych, Petro Bohach, Volodymyr Nikitin, and Andrii Yemchenko, and the ecologists Pavlo Svyrydenko, M. Voinstvensky, I. Sokur, N. Kalabukhov, M. Beskrovny, and M. Akimov were well-known specialists in their fields.
Biological research was conducted at the various scientific research institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR: biochemistry, physiology, microbiology and virology, molecular biology and genetics, problems of cryobiology and cryomedicine, botany, zoology, hydrobiology, the physiology of plants, the biology of southern seas. Furthermore, work in biology was carried on at botanical gardens and botanical museums, the Ukrainian Agricultural Academy (see, for example, the Institute of Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, the Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, the Institute of Zoology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, and the Institute of the Biology of Southern Seas of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR), biological research institutes, universities, the All-Union Genetic Selection Institute in Odesa, and agricultural institutes, veterinary institutes, and medical institutes.
The following scientific journals have been published in Ukraine: Ukraïns'kyi botanichnyi zhurnal, Vestnik zoologii, Tsitologiia i genetika, Molekuliarnaia biologiia, Mikrobiologicheskii zhurnal, Fiziologicheskii zhurnal, Neirofiziologiia (also published in English in the United States of America), Gidrobiologicheskii zhurnal, Biologiia moria, Fiziologiia i biokhimiia kul'turnykh rastenii, Introduktsiia ta aklimatyzatsiia roslyn na Ukraïni, and Zakhyst roslyn na Ukraïni.
Abroad the following émigré scientists continued to work in their areas of specialization: the plant developers Oleksander Arkhimovych and Viacheslav Savytsky; the pathophysiologist Ivan Bazylevych; the ichthyologists F. Velykokhatko, Yefym Slastenenko, and Yurii Rusov; the geneticist Mykhailo Vetukhiv; the cytologist Liubov Zafiiovska; the zoologist Edvard Zharsky; the entomologist Dmytro Zaitsiv; the protistologist Serhii Krasheninnikov; the botanist N. Osadcha-Yanata; the entomologist S. Paramoniv; the pathologist Ivan Rozhin; the microbiologist V. Panasenko; and the specialist in applied biology Pavlo Shumovsky. These scientists published in Zapysky Naukovoho Tovarystva im. Shevchenka, the Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States, and in non-Ukrainian journals.
(See also Biochemistry, Genetics, Molecular biology, Selection.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rozvytok nauky v Ukraïns'kii RSR za sorok rokiv (Kyiv 1957)
Vinogradov, K. Ocherki po istorii otechestvennykh gidrobiologicheskikh issledovanii na Chernom more (Kyiv 1958)
Istoriia Kyïvs'koho universytetu (Kyiv 1959)
Istoriia Akademiï nauk Ukraïns'koï RSR, 2 vols (Kyiv 1967)
Razvitie biologii v SSSR (Moscow 1967)
Mazurmovych, B. Rozvytok zoolohiï na Ukraïni (Kyiv 1972)
Istoriia biologii, 2 vols (Moscow 1972–5)
Akademiia nauk URSR s'ohodni (Kyiv 1977)
Istoriia Akademii nauk Ukrainskoi SSR (Kyiv 1979)
Edvard Zharsky
[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]