The presidium of newly created academy and its first academicians (three to each department) were appointed by the Ukrainian government, while the future members were expected to be elected by those academicians (as an active members). Among the first academicians were historians Dmytro Bahaliy and Orest Levytsky, economists Mykhailo Tuhan-Baranovsky and Volodymyr Kosynsky, eastern studies Ahathanhel Krymsky and Nikolai Petrov, linguist Stepan Smal-Stotsky, geologists Volodymyr Vernadsky and Pavlo Tutkovsky, biologist Mykola Kashchenko, mechanic Stepan Tymoshenko, law studies Fedir Taranovsky. For the post of the President of the Academy, the Hetman of Ukraine (head of state) Pavlo Skoropadsky invited Mykhailo Hrushevsky who at that time was the president of the Ukrainian Science Society and before the World War I served as the president of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lemberg, neighboring Austria-Hungary, but Hrushevsky declined the invitation yet later (sometime after 1923) became a major figure in the Ukrainian Academy of Science (UAS) in Kyiv.