Mikhail Ptukha

Born Oct. 26 (Nov. 7), 1884, in Oster, now in Kozelets Raion, Chernigov Oblast; died Oct. 3, 1961, in Kiev. Soviet statistician and demographer. Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1920) and corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1943). Brother of V. V. Ptukha.

After graduating in 1910 from the law faculty of the University of St. Petersburg, Ptukha began working in the university’s department of political economy and statistics; he became a privatdocent in 1913. From 1919 to 1938 he was director of the Institute of Demography of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (from 1934, the Institute of Demography and Health Statistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR). Ptukha taught at several higher educational institutions in Kiev. He headed the statistics department of the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR from 1940 to 1950 and the social science division of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR from 1945 to 1950.

Ptukha’s main works are on the general theory of statistics, theoretical and applied demography, and the history of statistics and demography. In 1929 he became a member of the International Statistical Institute, with which he had been associated from 1923. Ptukha was awarded two orders and various medals.