08/06/2026
Paul Dzul was the founder and long-serving president of the American Ukrainian Medical Foundation (AUMF) — a non-profit organization incorporated in the state of Michigan, dedicated to sponsoring the publication of Ukrainian-language medical textbooks and journals. Over the course of his career, he served as president of the World Federation of Ukrainian Medical Associations (WFUMA), established the Michigan Chapter of Ukrainian Medical Association of North America (UMANA), and for 36 years edited "Likarskyj Visnyk" — the only Ukrainian-language medical journal in the world. He was a practising otolaryngologist in Detroit and co-author of the English-Ukrainian Dictionary of Medical Terminology. His life's work helped bridge Western medical knowledge and the Ukrainian language at a time when that bridge was desperately needed.
Paul Dzul was born in Milno, a small village in western Ukraine, today in Ternopil oblast. He was the youngest of three sons; his father was a farmer. From an early age, Paul showed signs of exceptional intelligence, and his family made every effort to provide him the best education. He attended middle school in Zaliztsi and went on to finish the Ridna Shkola Ukrainian Gymnasium in Ternopil, then began a year of medical studies in Lviv. Much of this schooling took place under German occupation during the Second World War.
In 1944, his education was violently interrupted: Lviv University closed as the Red Army advanced. Having already lived through Soviet rule during the first occupation of the region (1939–1941), Paul made the decision to flee westward. Determined to complete his education, he enrolled at the University of Graz for a semester of medicine, then continued further west, reaching Innsbruck, Austria, as the war came to an end. In 1948, he graduated from the Innsbruck medical school. The following year, with the help and sponsorship of a fellow native of Milno living in Detroit, he arrived in the United States.
He began his American career at Grace Hospital, working in the laboratory. After obtaining his medical license, he moved into general practice, and in 1961 completed his otolaryngology residency at Detroit's Receiving Hospital, going on to build a full career as an otolaryngologist.
Alongside his clinical work, Paul channelled his energy into the Ukrainian medical community in the diaspora. In 1950, he was one of the founding members of UMANA. In 1967, he was appointed editor of its journal, "Likarskyj Visnyk" — a role that would define much of his public life.
He held that editorship for 36 years, developing an expertise in Ukrainian medical terminology that would prove foundational to everything that followed.
In 1977, WFUMA was established, and Paul was appointed to its Board, with "Likarskyj Visnyk" named as the federation's official publication. He became president of WFUMA at its fourth congress in Kharkiv in 1992. It was a period of historic possibility. Ukrainian physicians — long cut off from Western medicine — could now meet freely with diaspora colleagues who had trained and practised in the West, and do so in their own language. The third WFUMA Congress, held in still-Soviet Ukraine in 1988, had already signalled what was coming: members sang "Shche ne Vmerla Ukraina" in the Kyiv Opera — most likely the first time the anthem had been heard in that hall since 1918.
At the fifth WFUMA Congress in Dnipropetrovsk in 1994, Canadian physicians presented the first Ukrainian-language translation of a Western medical textbook — Davidson's Principles and Practice of Medicine. For Paul, it was a turning point. As WFUMA president, with connections to leading academic physicians in Ukraine and a sponsor in Harry Malinowski of Howell, Michigan, he now had the means to pursue something larger.
At the sixth congress in Odesa in 1996, Paul presented the opening lecture on the impact of WFUMA on medical education in Ukraine, and announced the Foundation's first publications: the English-Ukrainian Dictionary of Medical Terminology (co-authored by Paul himself), along with textbooks in obstetrics and gynaecology, traumatology, and otolaryngology.
At the eighth congress in Lviv, as Paul stepped down from the WFUMA presidency, the Foundation was reconstituted as the American Ukrainian Medical Foundation — AUMF — incorporated in Michigan, with Paul Dzul as its president and a board of Ukrainian-American professionals from the Detroit area. Under AUMF, he oversaw the publication of two landmark Ukrainian-language medical works: a translation of Dorland's medical dictionary, and the Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy — both made possible through the generosity of Harry-Hryhoriyi Malynovsky. A second edition of the Dorland dictionary followed, sponsored by Lubomyr Kurylko.
Paul Dzul had come from a farming village in western Ukraine, survived occupation and displacement, and rebuilt his life and education across three countries. What he built in the decades that followed — the journals, the textbooks, the institutions — gave Ukrainian medicine a language of its own at the precise moment it needed one most.
