Lypsky, Volodymyr

Lypsky, Volodymyr [Липський, Володимир; Lyps'kyj], b 11 March 1863 in Samostrily, Novohrad-Volynskyi county, Volhynia gubernia, d 24 February 1937 in Odesa. Botanist; full member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) from 1919 and corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1928. After graduating from Galagan College (1881) and Kyiv University (1886) he worked in the university’s and the Imperial botanical gardens. After the Revolution of 1917 Lypsky helped organize the VUAN, of which he served as vice-president (1921–2) and president (1922–8). From 1928 he was director of the Odesa Botanical Garden. Lypsky conducted many botanical expeditions to Central Asia, the Far East, Africa, and the Americas. He identified 4 new plant genera and over 220 new species and studied marine plants of the Black Sea and radioactive mineral springs of the Zhytomyr region. He published scientific accounts of the flora of Ukraine, Bessarabia, Caucasia, Central Asia, Tunisia, Algeria, and Indonesia, including multi-volume works on the flora of Caucasia (1899–1902) and Central Asia (1902–5) as well as Botanichnyi sad Ukraïns'koï akademiï nauk (Botanical Garden of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, 1922). Lypsky’s biography, by Andrii Barbarych, was published in Kyiv in 1958.

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