State Museum of Nature of V.N.Karazin Kharkiv National University

In 1805, shortly after the opening of the Kharkov Imperial University, the trustee of the Kharkov educational district, Count Severin Pototsky, purchased in St. Petersburg from the Italian Chetti collections, as they said, of "natural objects" containing: 125 stuffed birds, 36 sea urchins, 18 starfishes , 100 specimens of corals, 2623 shells of mollusks, 235 butterflies, 540 beetles, 520 pieces of minerals, physical instruments.
In the next 1806, in Hanover, by his order, the Natural Cabinet of Professor Andre was bought. In this acquisition was a collection of birds, insects, fossils and minerals. There is deep respect not only for the acquisition of nobles of “natural objects” - he testified to the desire to comprehensively equip the young university, but also for the titanic work to deliver this cargo to Kharkov. Given the transportation possibilities of the time, this was extremely difficult. The path of 1700 km was covered in about 70 days and only on April 2, 1807, which is called according to the last snow, the train with exhibits arrived in Kharkov on Universitetskaya Street.
From this date, the history of all university museums, which eventually became part of the united state Museum of Natural History, should be kept. Arriving in natural subjects, according to logic and the union of natural sciences existing at that time in the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, was to serve as the basis for the creation of the Faculty of Natural Sciences in this faculty, consisting of zoological and mineralogical collections. Subsequently, the Natural Cabinet was divided into zoological (later called the Museum of Darwinism) and mineralogical.

In 1905, the museum received a gift from the professor of botany V.M. Arnoldi, which consisted of large collections of corals, shells of mollusks, and snakes brought by him from a trip in 1905 to the islands of the Malay archipelago. If we take into account that the corals were on massive coasters, and the shell collection also contained tridacan shells (by the way, there is a legend that a professor bathed his little daughter in one of the flaps of the tridaca), then we get a load, which, apparently, had to be transported for one pay a lot. But the most remarkable replenishment of the office was the collection, which bequeathed to the university a real state adviser D.A. Donets-Zakharzhevsky. After his death, the heirs, fulfilling the will of the testator, handed over collections, which included: a collection of local and exotic winged animals, consisting of 19,217 species, 2130 genera (its catalog was five handwritten volumes) in 10 entomological cabinets; a collection of mollusk shells, consisting of 3218 specimens in 11 mahogany display cases; collection of fossils received in the mineralogical cabinet.

Such an intensive replenishment of the cabinet funds contributed to the fact that by the 100th anniversary of the founding of the zoological office turned into a Zoological Museum.

After the Second World War, the museum acquired its modern appearance through diligence, and its director Vitaly Nikolayevich Grubant played an important role here. At the beginning in 1946, he headed the Darwinism Museum, which in the 1960s was combined with the geological, mineralogical and paleontological collections of the geological faculty of Kharkov University (at that time A.M. Gorky State University). The integration process was completed when the collection of samples of the geological department was moved to the building on the street. Trinklera, 8 in January 1964. Thus, the founders of the Museum of Nature are two university museums: zoological and mineralogical.

The current Museum of Nature covers an area of ​​about 4 thousand square meters. His scientific funds include more than 250 thousand exhibits from around the world. These are stuffed animals and carcasses, skulls, fossils and skeletons, fossils, bird eggs, wet and dry preparations of various animals, samples of rocks and minerals, a collection of meteorites, models, plaster casts of extinct animals.

In 23 halls of the museum there are expositions of four departments: geological, invertebrate and vertebrate animals, evolution of the organic world and nature conservation.

Here you can see representatives of the animal world of all continents and seas of the Earth. In the collection of vertebrates you can see rare and endangered species of animals, and already extinct - wandering dove and Steller's cow . The largest bird collection in Ukraine is presented. The museum contains the largest collection of monkeys in Ukraine - 90 exhibits of 51 species. Part of it was purchased by the university from one of the collectors in the Poltava region. Also exhibited are the remains of fossil animals, including the skeleton of Plesosaurus, found in the Raisins of Kharkov region. In addition, a collection of invertebrates is demonstrated: sponges , corals and mollusks , worms , crustaceans , insects (more than 110,000 specimens), echinoderms and shellfish . There are numerous dioramas: for example, in the geological department you can observe an imitation of a volcanic eruption, see a carbonate cave with stalactites and stalagmites; in the department of invertebrates and vertebrates, a bird market , seal rookery and much more are shown.

At the entrance to the museum there are several ancient sculptures - Scythian and Polovtsian stone women , who were brought here from Slobozhany steppes.

• Kharkov , st. Trinklera, 8 Phone: (057) 705-12-42

• Official site