Kopernicki, Izydor, b 17 April 1825 in Chyzhivka, Zvenyhorodka county, Kyiv gubernia, d 17 April 1891 in Cracow. Polish physician, anthropologist, and ethnographer. A graduate of Kyiv University (1849), he was a military doctor in Ukraine and became a teacher of anatomy at Kyiv University in 1857. He took part in the Polish Insurrection of 1863–4 as a commissioner in Lviv, was imprisoned, and then lived as a refugee in Paris, Belgrade, and Bucharest, where he founded and directed the Anatomy Museum. From 1871 he worked as a physician in Cracow. He also studied (PH D 1876) and taught anthropology at Cracow University, from 1886 as a professor. In 1875 he became the secretary of the Anthropological Commission of the Polish Academy of Learning. He edited many ethnographic publications and the journal Zbiór Wiadomości do Antropologii Krajowej (1877–91), to which he contributed valuable studies on the anthropology and ethnography of Ukraine, particularly of the Hutsuls and other inhabitants of the Carpathian Mountains, where he spent much of his time. In 1889 he published O góralach ruskich w Galicyi: Zarysetnograficzny (On the Ruthenian Mountaineers in Galicia: An Ethnographic Sketch). He is the author of over 120 works; most of his research on Ukraine remains unpublished. In 1891 Kopernicki published Oskar Kolberg’s books on the Kholm region and the Peremyshl region. He had cordial relations with Ivan Franko, Fedir Vovk, and other Ukrainian scholars.

Mykola Mushynka

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]