From show trials to war: A brief history of Ukrainian scientists in portraits

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, at least 147 Ukrainian scientists have been killed in the war, according to the Ukrainian news site censor.net. But the killing and repression of Ukrainian scientists by the government in Moscow long predates this conflict.

​Before it gained independence in 1991, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, whose totalitarian government routinely jailed, exiled, and killed Ukrainian intellectuals deemed by Moscow to be enemies of the state. Many of them were scientists whose research had contributed to important advances in biology, neurology, physics, and other fields.​​

The scientific contributions of Ukrainians who have been killed by the Russian army or repressed by the Soviet state are the subject of “Freedom in the Equation,” an exhibition at the Harvard Science Center in Cambridge. Curated by the Science at Risk project, the show features portraits by Niklas Elmehed — official artist of the Nobel Prize — and biographical information that poignantly show how war and oppression stifled the work of some of Ukraine’s finest scientists.

​Below are thumbnail biographies of eight of the scientists profiled in the exhibit. Their names are spelled using Ukrainian transliteration. The exhibition will run through April 10.