Physical science and education of Prykarpattia are closely connected with the institution of higher education, where physics is one of the most respected and titled areas – Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University. Accordingly, the development of physics in the region is considered by comparing it chronologically and personally with the history of the university’s development. However, it would be unfair not to recall that Stanislaviv (Ivano-Frankivsk) both in the times of Austria-Hungary and in the interwar period of Polish subordination was an influential place of concentration of the ideas of science and enlightenment, the struggle of the Ukrainian intelligentsia for the priority of their native language, culture, political influence of the Ukrainian-centered elite, as well as science. In the absence of higher educational institutions and scientific institutions organized on the model of universities, only in Stanislaviv at the beginning of the twentieth century there were 5 gymnasiums of various types and subordination. And if most of them were focused on acquiring competencies in the humanitarian sphere, then there were institutions where natural science was cultivated; The priority of such institutions was the training of school teachers, as well as the selection of talented young people for further education in European educational institutions. For example, in 1920 the Higher Real School was organized, later reorganized into the Natural and Mathematical Gymnasium, where a separate role was given to the study of physics, mechanics, technology; The training was carried out with the aim of practical application of the knowledge gained. At the same time, the Imperial-Royal Gymnasium, organized in 1784 on the basis of the ex-Jesuit Collegium (with German as the language of instruction, in the twentieth century – Ukrainian and Polish as the language of instruction), can be considered the primary center in which regional physical education and science were born. Two classrooms (laboratories) were organized here – physical and natural, in which not only training was carried out, but also some scientific experiments. There was also a meteorological training station.
With the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent occupation of the region by Soviet troops, dramatic changes in the life of society affected the sphere of education. Elite educational institutions were liquidated, whose professors, like a significant part of the intelligentsia, tried to emigrate. The repressive machine of the Stalinist system did not bypass educators, especially representatives of the creative part of society, who did not accept the new system. Gymnasiums were closed or turned into ordinary schools. As a result, by the middle of 1940, there was a sharp shortage of teachers in the Stanislaviv region, which could not be eliminated even due to the invasions of specialists from the east of Ukraine, who were hastily trained at teachers’ courses, who were sent to work on the so-called “Komsomol vouchers”. In the autumn of 1939, 600 teachers worked in schools in the Carpathian region. With the introduction of compulsory universal education, the creation of hundreds of incomplete secondary schools and dozens of new secondary schools required several thousand teachers. As early as October 1939, teachers’ seminars began to work, but they also could not solve the problem. Therefore, the local authorities raised the issue of establishing a teachers’ institute in the regional center — the city of Stanislav (since 1962 – the city of Ivano-Frankivsk) before the government of the Ukrainian SSR. Already in January 1940, preparations for its opening began, and the institute itself began to function on March 1, 1940. The first director of the institution was the teacher of pedagogy of the Stanislav Pedagogical School Fedir Plotnitsky. The Institute began its work as a part of three faculties: History, Philology, Physics and Mathematics. 900 students studied at the full-time, evening and part-time departments. The first dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics was Mykola Korol, who after the war was entrusted with managing the institute and resuming its work in the difficult conditions of post-war reconstruction.
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| Korol Mykola Oleksiiovych |
In the post-war period, special attention of the institute’s management was paid to physics and mathematics education. Fragmentary remnants of the equipment of the physical laboratory were collected, and the newly created institute workshop was opened. Many demonstration devices were made by students with their own hands from scrap materials. In 1945, the sixth post-war graduation of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics; it was graduated by one graduate, Olha Kryvoshei, who received a diploma with honors in the specialty “secondary school physics teacher”
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| Dushchenko Viktor Pavlovich |
In 1950, the Teachers’ Institute was reorganized into the Stanislav Pedagogical Institute. The intensification of the development of physical education and science during this period and giving them a powerful impetus for future progress is closely connected with the arrival in October 1951 of a young graduate of the graduate school of the Kyiv State Pedagogical Institute named after M. Gorky Viktor Dushchenko to the position of the head of the Department of Physics. Viktor Pavlovych’s activities in Stanislaviv are striking in their multi-vector nature. Here, obviously, the foundations were laid and the tasks of future pedagogical research and priorities were set, later professed by Professor Dushchenko. The concept of understanding the mandatory use of demonstration and educational experiments in the study of physics was laid, on his initiative and leadership, a physical laboratory, a laboratory of technical teaching aids, and training workshops were created. Close cooperation was carried out with specialized teachers of the city and region; Taking into account the shortage of equipment for physics classrooms in schools, the production of elementary devices by students of the faculty and their transfer to school teachers was organized. On the initiative of Viktor Dushchenko, educational work was well organized, one of the aspects of which was a number of popular science articles, his and the teachers of the department, about scientific achievements and scientists in the regional newspaper “Prykarpatska Pravda”. Personnel work was properly organized, permanent methodological and scientific activities of the teachers of the department, preparation and defense of dissertations were introduced. In the regional newspaper “Prykarpatska Pravda” of January 1954, the director of the Stanislav State Pedagogical Institute H. Grechukh reports on the first graduation of 270 students, with a total number of 990 students and notes that in 1952 54 teachers worked at the institute and only six of them had a scientific title, and in 1953 there were already 66 teachers, including 12 associate professors and candidates of sciences. A number of teachers are preparing and defending their dissertations this year. He especially notes the contribution to the scientific and pedagogical work of the Institute of the Department of Physics under the leadership of V. Dushchenko, which publishes the first issue of the scientific journal of the institute “Scientific Notes”, dedicated to physical and mathematical disciplines. Viktor Pavlovich worked in Stanislav until August 1955.
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| Kyrychok Petro Pavlovych |
The Institute gradually established contacts with the leading higher institutions of the republic, which contributed to the influx of fresh teaching and research personnel. The rapid development of the scientific component of the Faculty’s activities is associated with the arrival of the Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Petro Kyrychko. The need to introduce the latest technologies at the enterprises that were built in the region (mainly the military-industrial complex SU), contributed to the creation and development of the research sector at the Institute, the scientific priorities of which from the very beginning concerned the physics and technology of ferrites, the production and properties of magnetic ceramics of various types and purposes. The Physical Laboratory was gradually equipped with the latest and most informative scientific equipment, some of which was unique even for the country. It was possible to use such research methods as X-ray spectral and X-ray diffraction analyses, electron paramagnetic resonance, Mössbauer spectroscopy, measurement of magnetic parameters of ferrites, electron microscopy. The results of research obtained at the Ivano-Frankivsk Pedagogical Institute and in cooperation with scientists from leading educational institutions and institutes of the Academy of Sciences are reflected in numerous publications in scientific journals, monographs, many of which are still relevant in the scientific world. Students were involved in scientific research on a large scale, which contributed to the training of their own highly qualified scientific personnel, who, after studying in graduate schools at other universities and scientific institutions, replenished the scientific and educational communities of institutions in Ivano-Frankivsk and other cities.
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| Freik Dmitriy Mikhailovich |
Science was intensively developed in the Pedagogical Institute itself. The return of the young Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Dmytro Freik from graduate school was the starting point for the beginning of research in the field of semiconductor materials science and the creation of a whole scientific school in the future, which has hundreds of publications, patents, and dozens of defended dissertations. Students of the scientific school of Professor Dmytro Freik continue to work in theoretical and experimental areas of research on semiconductor materials of various composition, morphology and application. The direction of research of thermoelectric semiconductor devices based on nanodispersed semiconductor systems. Professor Freik D.M. organized the Institute of Physics and Chemistry, the students of the scientific school of which continue to solve complex scientific problems, carry out a number of scientific projects of various types, including international ones.
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| Ostafiychuk Bogdan Konstantinovich |
In 1976 he worked at the institute as the head of the research Bohdan Ostafiychuk, a graduate of the postgraduate course of the Institute of Metal Physics of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, started the sector. He initiated the latest and promising at that time direction of scientific research of the physical properties of thin magnetic films based on iron-yttrium garnet, created and equipped a unique laboratory, which was eventually reformed into a joint research laboratory of the Precarpathian National University and the Institute of Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and received the status of a national treasure. The range of priority areas of research of the scientific school of Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor Bohdan Ostafiychuk is expanding.
it is filled with new tasks, challenges and content; Young highly qualified scientists are constantly involved in the activities of the scientific school, the laboratory base is replenished with the latest equipment, which makes it possible to implement new projects in the field of research of nanomaterials and nanosystems, materials for devices for generation and storage of electrical energy, chemical applications, ecology, medicine.
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| Klymyshyn Ivan Antonovych |
Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor Ivan Klymyshyn, author of scientific works on radiation space gas dynamics, a number of monographs, popular science books, current textbooks on astronomy for schools and universities, closely associates with Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University. The figure of Ivan Klymyshyn becomes especially significant for the university and science of Prykarpattia at a time when one of the priority projects of PNU is the restoration of the astronomical observatory on Mount Pip Ivan together with the institutions of the European Union and the beginning of a new era of astronomical research at the university.
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| Haiduchok Hryhorii Mykhailovych |
Fruitfully working in the field of fundamental and applied physics, the team The Faculty of Physics and Technology remains faithful to the tradition of adhering to the high level of methodological science introduced at the Pedagogical Institute. Directions related to didactics, methodology of teaching physics have always been highly valued by the team and carried out under the guidance of a whole cohort of specialists-methodologists. Here it is necessary to pay tribute to Associate Professor Hryhoriy Haiduchko, the author of a number of methodological textbooks and manuals, popular books for students. Under his leadership, a well-equipped laboratory of methods of teaching physics was organized and functions in an updated form.
A huge contribution to the development of the faculty and contribution to scientific and methodological work was made by Professor Ivan Kucheruk, a student of Viktor Dushchenko. He served as Rector of the Institute in 1982-1986. The Ukrainian-language textbook-three-volume on general physics co-authored by Ivan Kucheruk is still popular among teachers and students of the Faculty of Physics and Technology, and the popularity of the physics specialty during the rectorship of Professor I.M. Kucheruk was so high that the competition of entrants at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics was one of the highest at the institute. Methodologists of the faculty are traditionally characterized by a focus on teaching physics through the use of experiment in the broadest sense of the term.
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| Kucheruk Ivan Mitrofanovych |
The Faculty of Physics and Technology and the Department of Physics and Teaching Methods are the organizers and experts of various methodological, educational events, closely cooperate with the pedagogical community of Prykarpattia. Graduates of physical and pedagogical specialties of the faculty are desirable workers in scientific, industrial, educational institutions of the region, Ukraine, and abroad.
Since the establishment of the faculty as a separate structural unit, a large-scale program for the introduction of new scientific and educational directions in the field of technical sciences has been implemented. The areas of computer engineering and electronics were developed, which was marked by the creation of new educational laboratories, the implementation of scientific projects, educational activities in these areas for all educational levels.
Today, the Faculty of Physics and Technology is one of the leading educational and scientific departments of Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University. Its creation as a separate structural unit of the university in 2006 was a stage in the logical development of physical and technical areas of educational and research activities of the staff of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics (up to 20 years old), the Faculty of Physics, and later the Department of Physics of the Institute of Natural Sciences. The Faculty organizes the work of four departments – Solid State Physics and Chemistry, Materials Science and New Technologies, Computer Engineering and Electronics, Physics and Teaching Methods, the modern areas of educational and scientific activity of which are the result of the evolution of human resources and priority areas of scientific-design and educational-organizational work for many decades.