Born in 1918 Under a Hetman’s Law: Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, headquartered in Kyiv, is by law Ukraine’s highest scholarly institution, a self-governing body of scholars. According to the Academy’s own description, as of March 1, 2026, it encompassed 159 research institutions. It began in November 1918, in the Ukrainian State that emerged after the collapse of the Russian Empire, with a single law signed by Hetman (head of state) Pavlo Skoropadskyi.

We confirm the circumstances of its founding, the changes in its name and presidents, and its current scale, using the Academy’s own official history and annual reports, the entry “National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine” (revised 2017) in the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU) published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, and the entry in the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine (ЄСУ, written by I. Dziuba), published by, among others, the Academy itself.

The Law of November 14, 1918

According to ЄСУ, on May 5, 1918, Mykola Vasylenko, the Ukrainian State’s Minister of Public Education, presented Skoropadskyi with a plan that included Ukrainianizing schools, founding universities, and establishing an academy of sciences and a national library, and the plan was approved. Volodymyr Vernadsky, a geologist and geochemist who had been a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, was invited to head the commission drafting the academy’s founding law. The commission worked from July 9 to September 17, 1918.

According to the Academy’s official history, on November 14 Skoropadskyi signed the law “On the Founding of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv” and, the same day, appointed the first twelve full members: the historian Dmytro Bahalii, the orientalist Ahatanhel Krymskyi, Vernadsky, the mechanician Stepan Tymoshenko, the economist Mykhailo Tuhan-Baranovskyi, and others. According to IEU, the charter divided the academy into three divisions—historical-philological, physical-mathematical, and social sciences—required publications in Ukrainian, and allowed Ukrainians from western Ukraine, then under Austro-Hungarian rule, to become full members.

ЄСУ also notes that on that same November 14, Skoropadskyi issued a document declaring federation with Russia, and that an uprising against his government began that day. In December, the Directorate of the Ukrainian People’s Republic took Kyiv. In between, on November 27, eight of the twelve full members held the first general meeting, electing Vernadsky president and Krymskyi permanent secretary (official history, ЄСУ).

Which Day Is the “Founding Day”?

Which day is treated as the Academy’s “founding day” differs from source to source.

IEU writes that Soviet-era accounts ignored the founding under the Hetman government and treated 1919, when the Bolsheviks took Kyiv, as the starting point.

Timeline: Names and Presidents

Borys Paton served as president from 1962 until his death in 2020. Paton and the Paton Electric Welding Institute are covered in our article on the Paton Welding Institute.

Former Name / Current Name

The Academy’s name has changed four times. Using the breaks given in the Academy’s own official history, here they are alongside how IEU and ЄСУ describe them.

IEU writes that adding “All-Ukrainian” in 1921 emphasized the academy’s significance for Ukrainians living in Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Of the 1936 renaming, it writes that the academy changed from a national academy to a territorial one for a single Soviet republic.

Repression in the 1930s

In the 1930s, scholars of the Academy were arrested and deported one after another. IEU cites the historian Nataliya Polonska-Vasylenko’s estimate that more than 250 researchers, including 22 full members, were subjected to repression (the fate of writers and scholars of this era is covered in our article on Sandarmokh).

The Academy Today

According to the Academy’s own description (as of March 1, 2026), its highest body is the general meeting of full and associate members, and between meetings the Academy is led by a presidium serving a five-year term. Research is organized into three divisions (physical-technical and mathematical sciences; chemical and biological sciences; and social sciences and humanities) and 14 sections, encompassing 159 research institutions. These include the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine and the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology. It jointly operates five regional scientific centers with the Ministry of Education and Science; the Crimean center’s activity and funding have been suspended since 2014.

Two candidates stood in the presidential election of October 7, 2025, and Zahorodnii was re-elected with 608 of the 694 ballots cast (per the Academy’s announcement and annual report).

Staff Numbers: What Is Being Counted

The number of people working at the Academy has fallen sharply since the end of the Soviet Union. But different sources count different scopes.

IEU notes that the 1988 and 2012 figures also include people working outside the research institutions. The 2016 and 2025 figures are not necessarily counted on the same basis either. Any statement about the scale of the decline needs to specify the year and the scope being counted.