Mykhailo Maksymovych

Mykhailo Maksymovych was born on 15 September 1804 at the Tymkivshchyna farmstead in the Poltava region. A professor of botany at Moscow University and author of “Foundations of Botany”, he also collected Ukrainian folk songs and published several collections of them.

In 1834 he was elected the first rector of Kyiv’s newly opened St Volodymyr University, stepping down in 1835 because of ill health. The university’s famous Red Building was completed later; today it carries a memorial plaque to its first rector, and the university’s research library is named after him.

Maksymovych is regarded as the first historian of ancient Kyiv, with some 25 works on the city, including “An Outline of Kyiv” (1847) and “Letters on Kyiv” (1871). He published the almanac “Kievlianin” (1840, 1841, 1850) and was a friend of Taras Shevchenko, who drew his portrait. He died on 22 November 1873 at his farmstead of Mykhailova Hora, where he is buried. A street in Kyiv bears his name.