Mykhailo Pylypovych Kravchuk was born on September 27, 1892 in the village of Chovnytsia, Kivertsiv District, Volyn, in the family of a surveyor. His father, Pylyp Yosypovych, the son of a peasant shoemaker, graduated from the Petrovsky-Rozumov Academy (nowadays - Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy) His mother, Adelfina Friedrichivna, a German by birth, was an educated woman, fluent in Polish, French, and German, she also played the piano. For some time, without archival data, it was believed that her name was Fredericka. The Kravchuk family spoke Ukrainian, although the children learned Polish, French, and German.
After graduating with a gold medal from the gymnasium in Lutsk in 1910, Mykhailo Kravchuk enters the mathematical department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Imperial University of St. Vladimir in Kyiv. The first teachers of the student Mykhailo Kravchuk were prominent mathematicians V.P.Yermakov, D.O.Grave, G.V.Pfeiffer, B.Y.Bukreev. During his student years he published the first independent study on the theory of commutative matrix.
In 1914 M. Kravchuk graduated from the university with a first-degree diploma and, at the request of Professors Grave and Bukreev, remained at the university to prepare for a professorship.
Successfully passing the master's exams, M. Kravchuk on September 5, 1917, gave his first (trial) lecture on the subject of pure mathematics "On functions that substantiate the addition theorem" and a lecture on set theory, and received the title of privat-docent. He teaches mathematics at the Ukrainian People's University, Polytechnic, Architectural, Veterinary, Zootechnical and Agricultural Institutes, in the first and second Ukrainian gymnasiums. During this period, M.P. Kravchuk published his course of lectures on geometry and the first translation into Ukrainian of the famous textbook on geometry by Kiselyov, together with Academician Fedor Kalinovych compiled a three-volume Ukrainian mathematical dictionary.
During the difficult years of a civil war M.P. Kravchuk went with his young wife, Esfira Yosypivna (1894–1957), to the village of Savarka, Boguslav district, where he worked from 1919 to 1921 as a school principal and mathematics teacher.
Returning to the university, Mykhailo Pylypovych dived into scientific activity; he obtained a number of fundamental results and in 1924 successfully defended his doctoral dissertation. In 1925 he was awarded the title of professor.
M. Kravchuk was a talented teacher, world-famous future designers of rocket and space technology were among his students - academicians Arkhyp Lyulka, Sergey Korolyov, Volodymir Chelomey.
In September 1928 M. Kravchuk attended the International Mathematical Congress in Italy (Bologna) and reported at a meeting of the Mathematical Society in Paris. At the congress he established friendly relations with famous scientists from France, Italy, and Germany: J. Adamar, R. Courant, F. Tricomi, T. Levi-Civita, D. Hilbert. He also participated in the Mathematical Congress in Zurich in 1932 with a report on the problems of the moments.
In 1929, at the age of 37, M.P. Kravchuk became the youngest academician of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The next eight years were the most fruitful in the life of M. Kravchuk.
He successfully developed the least squares method in the theory of approximate integration of differential and integral equations. The vast majority of M.P.Kravchuk's works on the theory of approximate integration of different types of differential equations are devoted to the development and application of the method of moments. He summarized the obtained results in the fundamental two-volume monograph "Application of the method of moments to the solution of linear differential and integral equations" (1936). The first volume is a study of the method of moments in its application to the approximate solution of ordinary linear differential equations and systems of these differential equations. The second volume deals with linear equations with partial derivatives of mathematical physics.
In 2001 Ivan Kachanovsky (USA) found in the archives of the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington and Iowa State University in Ames a translation of two volumes of this monograph in English by American mathematician and physicist, inventor of the first electronic computer John Vincent Atanasoff. In 1937, in a letter to Academician Kravchuk, Atanasoff wrote that the publications of the Ukrainian mathematician proved to be very useful in his work, and he would like to have copies of all the works of the scientist, published in Ukrainian journals. However, he did not receive an answer ...
On September 14, 1937, the newspaper "Communist" published an article "Academician Kravchuk advertises enemies", signed by the director of the Institute of Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences D. Grave and the scientific secretary of the Institute K. Breus, in which it was reported that M. Kravchuk positively assessed the works of mathematicians arrested by the NKVD as "enemies of the people", in particular his student V. Mozhar. Other devastating articles appeared, shameful trials took place within the walls of the Polytechnic Institute and the University, and former colleagues and graduate students turned away from the scientist. His mathematical achievements are questioned, he is branded as a hidden nationalist engaged in anti-Soviet actions.
Few had the civic courage to defend the scientist. Among such brave heroes were Y. Pogrebynsky, Y. Sokolov, O. Smogorzhevsky, M. Chebotaryov, P. Bondarenko, V. Zmorovych.
On February 21, 1938 Mykhailo Pylypovych was arrested, his family's apartment was searched, and on February 23 the presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, headed by President O. Bogomolets decided to remove M.P. Kravchuk from the list of actual members of the academy. On September 23, 1938 "external session" of the Military Chamber of the Supreme Court of the USSR recognized M.P. Kravchuk as an active participant and leader of the nationalist organization and delivered a Judgement: 20 years in prison and 5 years of deprivation of political rights. The trial lasted 30 minutes. In the last word, the scientist asked to give him the opportunity to finish the started work in mathematics.
From Kyiv he was sent to Vladivostok, from there in the hold of the dry cargo ship "Juma" to Magadan, and then - to the sinister Kolyma mines.
From the memoirs of former prisoner Mykola Popov: "In these terrible conditions, I met in Maldyak in 1942 Ukrainian academician, the famous mathematician Mykhailo Pylypovych Kravchuk. He was probably fifty years old. When he returned from the mine, he settled near the iron stove, took out his papers, made notes - some mathematical calculations. I remember very well that he periodically submitted his works to the camp political leader - only under such conditions he managed to get permission to engage in such a business ... ". "I made a great mathematical discovery, which I worked on for 20 years," the scientist wrote from Kolyma to his wife, but the manuscript disappeared.
On March 9, 1942, Academician Kravchuk passed away…
After many petitions from his wife, Esfira Yosypivna, in 1956 M.P. Kravchuk was rehabilitated "for lack of evidence." However, his name was kept in secret for many years.
The first publications about him appeared only in 1967–1968, on the 75th anniversary of the great mathematician's birth: M.O Soroka's brochure "Poet of the dumb number", articles by N.O. Virchenko, V.O. Dobrovolsky and others.
Nina Opanasivna Virchenko became the real inspirer of the attempts to return Mikhail Kravchuk from oblivion. About half a century ago, working at the University of Kiev, she came across mentions of the scientific activities of M. Kravchuk, and began to study his works, scattered in magazines. Her goal was to do everything possible to make his name take its rightful place among the constellation of outstanding mathematicians.
It was fully accomplished after Ukraine gained independence. In 1992, the name of Mykhailo Kravchuk was included by UNESCO in the International Calendar of Outstanding Scientists. On the initiative of Nina Virchenko in 1992 the first International Scientific Conference named after Mykhailo Kravchuk was held, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of his birth. Thanks to her promoting activity, these conferences became the largest at our university. Sometimes up to a thousand scientists from more than twenty countries took part in them. On the initiative of N. Virchenko in 2002 an auditorium named after Mykhailo Kravchuk was opened at our university, in 2003 - a monument to an outstanding scientist, in 2009 one of Kyiv's streets was named after him. Also popular science works of M.Kravchuk were published (2000, 232 pages, compiled by N. Virchenko), "Selected Mathematical Works" (2002, 800 pages, compiler N. Virchenko), "Development of mathematical ideas of Mykhaylo Kravchuk" (2004, 850 pages, compilers N. Virchenko, I. Kachanovsky, V. Gaidey, R. Andrushkiv, R. Voronka). In 2004, the documentary "Golgotha of Academician Kravchuk" was made. In 2012, the Jubilee Session of the General Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the birth of Academician M.P. Kravchuk, was held. Part of the heart of Nina Virchenko in all these great deeds. She is so-called spiritual daughter of Mykhaylo Kravchuk.
Exactly a quarter of a century has passed this year since the first mathematical forum dedicated to the memory of Mykhaylo Kravchuk. The first day of the current XVIII International Conference named after M. Kravchuk began at the Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University(Lutsk) and continued in the village of Chovnytsia. The conference was quite representative, its participants were the First Deputy Minister of Education and Science V.V. Kovtunets, People's Deputy of Ukraine of the 8th convocation I.M. Konstankevich, a delegation of students and teachers of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and others.
Volynian’s preparation for M.Kravchuk's anniversary was exceptional! A plenary session was held in Lutsk at a high level, and leading scientists made reports. Pupils of the village of Chovnytsia under the guidance of a creative group of teachers of Kivertsy district prepared a project to study the life and work of M.P.Kravchuk, carried out QR-coding of presentation materials in order to create a virtual museum of the scientist under the slogan "You have a mobile phone - learn more about your genius countryman, Academician Mykhailo Kravchuk." A wonderful concert of children's and adult music groups took place, students took a tour of the Mykhailo Kravchuk Museum.
The results of M.P. Kravchuk's research are now widely used in the United States, Japan, France, Germany, Malaysia and other countries because of the development of applied mathematics and computer science. Thus, in 2003, scientists from the University of Malaya (Malaysia) proposed a new method of image processing and reconstruction using Kravchuk's moments. In 2006, Greek scientists reported three-dimensional search algorithms based on Kravchuk's three-dimensional moments for processing three-dimensional images. In 2009, a group of scientists from France, the United States and Germany demonstrated the effectiveness of using Kravchuk's suspended three-dimensional moments as a data analysis tool for recognizing the nature of tumours. The use of polynomials and Kravchuk's transformation in coding theory, which began in the 1970s, is still active today. Numerous scientific ideas of M.P. Kravchuk will be studied, deepened and developed, because his mathematical genius is far ahead of its time.