Doctor Elie Metchnikoff, in his laboratory, Nature & Science

Hands of Alexander Brailowsky

At the beginning of cinema stood Ukrainian mechanic Yosyp Timchenko together with physicist Mykola Lyubimov, who two years before the discovery of the Lumiere brothers, developed a “snail” – a jumping mechanism.In 1893, films shot using a kinescope were already being shown in Odessa, thus outpacing the Lumières. But Timchenko failed to patent his device. His kinescope is still stored in the storage rooms of the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow. Timchenko was also the author of automatic meteorological, physical and astronomical instruments, for which he received awards at world exhibitions. He participated in the creation of the first model of the Freudenberg automatic telephone exchange.

Valentina Radzymovska: founder of the Ukrainian school of physiologists and biochemistsValentyna Radzymovska (1886–1953) was a Ukrainian physician and scientist who was one of the first in the world to study the influence of acid-base balance on living cells and laid the foundations of the Ukrainian school of physiologists and biochemists. A professor at Kyiv and Lviv institutions, a participant in the liberation struggle and public and political life, she survived arrest in the case of the “Union for the Liberation of Ukraine”, Nazi occupation, and emigration to Germany and the USA. Leading figures of the Ukrainian movement gathered in her Kyiv apartment, and her scientific works combined laboratory experiments with concern for the health of children and tuberculosis patients. The portrait recreates the image of a woman for whom science, Ukraine, and human dignity were inseparable.