page_title: Mykhaylo Maksymovych
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Mykhaylo Maksymovych / Life
caption_attribution_description: Українська: Портрет М.О.Максимовича (Папір, італійський олівець, крейда)
context_page_description: Mykhaylo Oleksandrovych Maksymovych was a famous professor in plant biology, historian and writer in the Russian Empire of a Cossack background.
  He contributed to the life sciences, especially botany and zoology, and to linguistics, folklore, ethnography, history, literary studies, and archaeology.
  In 1871 he was elected as a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian language and literature department. Maksymovych also was a member of the Nestor the Chronicler Historical Association that existed in Kiev in 1872-1931.
context_section_description: Maksymovych was born into an old Zaporozhian Cossack family which owned a small estate on Mykhailova Hora near Prokhorivka, Zolotonosha county in Poltava Governorate (now in Cherkasy Oblast) in Left-bank Ukraine. After receiving his high school education at Novgorod-Severskiy Gymnasium, he studied natural science and philology at philosophy faculty of Moscow University and later the medical faculty, graduating with his first degree in 1823, his second in 1827; thereafter, he remained at the university in Moscow for further academic work in botany. In 1833 he received his doctorate and was appointed as a professor for the chair of botany in the Moscow University.
  He taught biology and was director of the botanical garden at the university. During this period, he published extensively on botany and also on folklore and literature, and got to know many of the leading lights of Russian intellectual life including the Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin and Russian writer, Nikolay Gogol, and shared his growing interest in Cossack history with them.
  In 1834, he was appointed professor of Russian literature at the newly created Saint Vladimir University in Kiev and also became the university's first rector, a post that he held until 1835. (This university had been established by the Russian government to reduce Polish influence in Ukraine and Maksymovych was, in part, an instrument of this policy). Maksymovych elaborated wide-ranging plans for the expansion of the university which eventually included attracting eminent Ukrainians and Russians like, Nikolay Kostomarov, and Taras Shevchenko to teach there.
  In 1847, he was deeply affected by the arrest, imprisonment, and exile of the members of the Pan-Slavic Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, many of whom, like the poet Taras Shevchenko, were his friends or students. Thereafter, he buried himself in scholarship, publishing extensively.
  In 1853, he married, and in 1857, in hope of relieving his severe financial situation, went to Moscow to find work. In 1858, Shevchenko returning from exile, visited him in Moscow, and when Maksymovych returned to Mykhailova Hora, visited him there as well. At this time, Shevchenko painted portraits of both Maksimovich and his wife, Maria.
  During his final years, Maksimovich devoted himself more and more to history and engaged in extensive debates with the Russian historians Mikhail Pogodin and Nikolay Kostomarov.
caption: 1859 portrait by Taras Shevchenko
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