List of Ukrainian Americans

This is a list of notable Ukrainian-Americans, including both original immigrants who obtained American citizenship and their American descendants.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

To be included in this list, the person must have a Wikipedia article showing they are Ukrainian American or must have references showing they are Ukrainian American and are notable.

Actors

• Nick Adams (actor) – actor^[1]
• Bethany Benz - pornographic actress (born in Ukraine)
• Pat Bilon – actor
• Matt Czuchry – actor^[2]
• Erika Eleniak – actress, father is of Ukrainian descent^[3]
• Taissa Farmiga – actress
• Vera Farmiga – actress^[4]
• John Hodiak – actor^[5]
• Milla Jovovich – famous actress, supermodel and musician (born in Kiev, to a Serbian father and a Russian mother)
• Kiril Kulish – stage actor^[6]
• Mila Kunis – actress and voice actress (Ukrainian Jewish)
• Oksana Lada – actress (born in western Ukraine)
• Laryssa Lauret – actress^[7]
• Traci Lords – actress born Nora Kuzma; her father was of Ukrainian ancestry.^[8]
• Leonard Nimoy - actor
• Larisa Oleynik – actress (of Ukrainian descent on her father's side)
• Lizabeth Scott – actress, second-generation Ukrainian on both sides, though sources apparently differ on the matter (see main article references)
• Bree Olson – pornographic actress
• Kim Ostrenko – an American theater and movie actress, with significant roles in 16 movies, most recently playing Alice Connellan in Dolphin Tale (2011).
• Jack Palance – actor^[9]
• John Spencer – actor (on the maternal side Ukrainian – American)^[10]
• John Strong – pornographic actor
• Katheryn Winnick – known for one of the leading roles in Vikings Series; originally from Canada.
• Zoë Wanamaker - an actress renowned for her role as Susan Harper in the television series 'My Family' - Father of Ukrainian Jewish extraction ^[11]
• Victoria Zdrok - pornographic actress (born in Ukraine)

Artists and designers

• Alexander Archipenko – artist, sculptor^[12]
• Nudie Cohn – fashion designer
• Abram Molarsky – impressionist painter

Chess players

• Stepan Popel – chess player^[13]
• Anna Zatonskih – chess player^[14]

Government / civil servants

• Christopher A. Boyko – United States federal judge
• Paula Dobriansky – an American foreign policy expert who has served in key roles as a diplomat and policy maker in the administrations of five U.S. presidents, both Democrat and Republican. She is a specialist in the areas of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as well as political-military affairs.

Engineers

• Igor Sikorsky – helicopter designer (on the maternal side Russian – Ukrainian)^[15]
• Stephen Timoshenko - engineer who is reputed to be the father of modern engineering mechanics

Military officers

• Samuel Jaskilka – former Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps

Musicians

• Neko Case – singer, songwriter, member of The New Pornographers
• Kvitka Cisyk – soprano singer^[16]
• Bob Dylan - singer-songwriter, poet. His paternal grandparents emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States following the anti-Semitic pogroms of 1905.
• Anthony Fedorov (1985 – ) singer; finalist on season 4 of American Idol^[17]
• Vladimir Horowitz - Jewish Ukrainian pianist. Widely regarded as one of the most successful pianists of the 20th century.
• George Hrab - drummer, singer, songwriter and podcaster. He often discusses his Ukrainian heritage on his podcast
• Eugene Hütz – musician and actor; lead singer of Gogol Bordello^[18]
• Lenny Kravitz - singer, instrumentalist (the family of his father Sy Kravitz has Ukrainian roots)^[19]
• Julian Kytasty - bandurist, traditional Ukrainian music
• Wally Palmar – musician of The Romantics^[20]
• Vyacheslav Polozov - Opera singer
• Sviatoslav Richter - German Ukrainian pianist. Widely regarded as one of the most successful pianists of the 20th century.
• Dorian Rudnytsky – cellist and composer (son of Maria Sokil, his father's Ukrainian)^[21]
• Nicole Scherzinger - singer, songwriter and television music competition judge (of Ukrainian descent on her mother's side)
• Maria Sokil – soprano singer^[22]

Politicians

• Kirill Reznik – politician – Member, Maryland House of Delegates
• Kathleen Willey – major figure in the Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones scandals. Her father was of Ukrainian descent.^[23]

Religious figures

• Paul Copan – a Christian theologian, analytic philosopher, apologist, and author. President of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.
• Jim Cymbala – pastor for over 25 years of the 10,000-member Brooklyn Tabernacle church in Brooklyn, NY.
• Agapius Honcharenko – exiled Orthodox priest^[24]

Sports stars

Igor Olshansky

• Wayne Chrebet – former NFL player
• Sasha Cohen – Olympic silver medalist figure skater (on the maternal side Jewish – Ukrainian).^[25]
• Mike Ditka – football player and coach^[26]
• Ruslan Fedotenko – Ukrainian-born ice hockey player, US citizen
• Wayne Gretzky - ice hockey player of Ukrainian descent; US-Canadian dual citizen
• Dima Kovalenko – (Dmytro "Dema"Kovalenko, born August 28, 1977 in Kiev) – soccer player who currently plays for Los Angeles Galaxy in Major League Soccer.
• Lenny Krayzelburg Olympic swimmer
• Evan Longoria - Major League Baseball third baseman for the Tampa Bay Rays of Ukrainian descent on maternal side
• Bronko Nagurski – former NFL player and professional wrestler
• Igor Olshansky- (born 1982 in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine) – football defensive end for the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League
• Oleg Prudius – professional wrestler known as Vladimir Kozlov
• Dmitry Salita – Ukrainian born American boxer.Also called Star of David.
• Richard Sandrak (1992 – ) child bodybuilder^[27]
• Flip Saunders – head coach for Detroit Pistons and coaches in the NBA
• Wally Szczerbiak – basketball player in the NBA and currently plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
• Keith Tkachuk - ice hockey player of Ukrainian descent; US born citizen

Scientists and scholars

Alexei Filippenko

Jane Lubchenco

Gregory Mankiw

Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper

• Lev Dobriansky – was a professor of economics at Georgetown University, U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas and anti-communist advocate. He is known for his work with the National Captive Nations Committee, which he initiated during the Eisenhower Administration, and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, at which he served as a chairman.
• Katherine Esau – botanist^[28]
• Alexei Filippenko – astrophysicist and professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Filippenko developed and runs the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT), a fully robotic telescope which conducts the Lick Observatory Supernova Search (LOSS), the most successful nearby supernova search. The Thompson-Reuters "incites" index ranked Filippenko as the most cited researcher in space science for the ten-year period between 1996 and 2006. In 2006 Filippenko was awarded the US Professor of the Year Award. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2009. He is frequently featured in the History Channel series The Universe.
• Konstantin Frank – a notable viticulturist and winemaker, who was responsible for developing the thriving viticulture and wine industry of New York State, using his experience of growing the Southern European Vitis vinifera varietals in the colder climate of Ukraine.
• George Gamow – astrophysicist^[29]
• Taras Hunczak – historian (Ph. D./Professor) and media adviser; expert in the East European history and languages.
• Lubomyr Kuzmak – was a pioneer within the bariatric surgery community inventing the adjustable gastric band.
• Max Levchin – computer scientist and internet entrepreneur widely known as one of the co-founders (along with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk) and former chief technology officer of PayPal. Founded a number of other technology companies.
• Jane Lubchenco – environmental scientist and marine ecologist, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
• Sonja Lyubomirsky – professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside researching positive psychology and happiness, an associate editor of the Journal of Positive Psychology, and the author of The How of Happiness, a book of strategies backed by scientific research that can be used to increase happiness.^[30]
• Greg Mankiw – a well-known macroeconomist and Chairman and Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He is best known in academia for his work on New Keynesian economics and publishing one of the most popular economics textbooks, the best-selling Principles of Economics. From 2003 to 2005, Mankiw was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush. His economics blog was ranked the number one economics blog by US economics professors in a 2011 survey.^[31] In 2007 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Along with David Card, he was elected vice president of the American Economic Association for 2014.
• Jeffrey Miron – an American economist and outspoken libertarian. He was the chairman of the Department of Economics at Boston University from 1992 to 1998,^[32] and currently serves as a Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Harvard University's Economics Department.^[33]
• Anna Nagurney – mathematician, economist, educator and author in the field of Operations Management; holds the John F. Smith Memorial Professorship in the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
• Simon Ramo – physicist (Russian – Ukrainian)
• Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper – astronaut and a naval officer.
• Eugene Volokh – American law professor, the Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, as well as an academic affiliate of the law firm Mayer Brown.^[34] He publishes the blog "The Volokh Conspiracy".
• Michael J. Yaremchuk – famous plastic surgeon

Writers and journalists

• Steve Ditko – comic book writer^[35]
• Chuck Palahniuk – famous transgressive fiction novelist and freelance journalist.
• Mike Royko- journalist (his father's Ukrainian).

Other

• Vasyl Avramenko – dancer/choreographer^[36]
• Juliya Chernetsky – television personality^[37]
• Maksim Chmerkovskiy – dancer and choreographer, known for Dancing with the Stars
• Valentin Chmerkovskiy – dancer and choreographer, known for Dancing with the Stars
• John Demjanjuk – retired auto worker/war crimes defendant^[38]
• Edward Dmytryk (1908–1999) – film director who was amongst the Hollywood 10, a group of blacklisted film industry professionals who served time in prison for being in contempt of Congress during the McCarthy era red scare^[39]
• Sy Kravitz - television producer^[19]
• Semion Mogilevich – alleged "boss of bosses" of most Russian Mafia syndicates
• Igor Vovkovinskiy – Ukrainian-American law student, interviewee, and actor, best known for being the current tallest living person in the United States,^[40][41] at 7 feet 8.33 inches (234.5 cm), overtaking the record from George Bell. In 2013, Vovkovinskiy was part of Ukraine's stage performance at the Eurovision Song Contest 2013.^[41]

See also

• List of Ukrainian Canadians

References