Mykhailo Oleksandrovych Maksymovych (; 3 September 1804 – 10 November 1873) was a famous professor in plant biology, Ukrainian 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 Kyiv in 1872-1931. Life 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 Novhorod-Siverskyi 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, Nikolai 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 Kyiv 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, Mykola 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