Kholodny, Hryhorii

Kholodny, Hryhorii [Холодний, Григорій; Xolodnyj, Hryhorij], b 3 March 1886 in Tambov, Russia, d 17 February 1938 on the Solovets Islands. A mathematician and astronomer by training, Kholodny devoted himself to the development of Ukrainian scientific terminology. In 1918 he published a dictionary of Ukrainian physics terms. As secretary and then director of the Institute of the Ukrainian Scientific Language of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and chief editor of its journal Visnyk IUNM (1928–30), he played an important role in defining the principles underlying the institute’s work: a reliance on the popular Ukrainian language, especially in the formation of neologisms, and the extensive use of the results of terminological work in Galicia. Kholodny was arrested in 1929 during the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (SVU) trials and charged with ‘nationalist wrecking.’ He survived many years in exile before he was executed.

[This article was updated in 2020.]