Rizhsky, Ivan

Rizhsky, Ivan [Ріжський, Іван; Rižskij], b 19 September 1759 in Riga, Latvia, d 27 March 1811 in Kharkiv. Russian classical and literary scholar and philosopher; member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences from 1803 and the first rector of Kharkiv University (1805–7, 1808–11). He was educated and taught in Saint Petersburg. There he published two books on ancient Roman religion (1784) and politics (1786), two widely used textbooks on logic (1790) and rhetoric (1796; 2nd edn [1805] and 3rd edn [1822]: Kharkiv), and a translations of Peter Pallas’s physical and topographic description of the Crimea (1795). In Kharkiv he was a professor of literature and published an introduction to the study of literature (1806) and one of the first Russian books on poetics (1811). He was influenced by the writings of the encyclopedists and Voltaire.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]