Assistant Professor, PhD in Systematic philosophy
College of International Management ISM Slovakia in Prešov,
3951/1 Duchnovičovo námestie Sq., Prešov, 080 01, Slovak Republic
Boris E. Paton (1918 – 2020) passed away
One of the world’s greatest scientists, academician Boris E. Paton, suddenly left us on August 19. He succumbed to numerous heart diseases he suffered during his life. Academician Boris E. Paton was born on November 14, 1918 in Kiev into the family of academician Eugene O. Paton, the son of Russian Consul Oskar P. Paton. His father was again the legendary Russian general Peter I. Paton, who successfully fought Napoleon I. His ancestors were Scottish Protestants. His father, Ivan P. Paton, was a court adviser. He was the son of the important architect Petr G. Paton. His father was George Paton, the court cook of Peter I the Great, who came to Russia from Scotland.
Boris Paton grew up in Kiev. There was no exemplary student in high school, he was once awarded 9 decks (in the sense of the Slovak classification of fours). He graduated from the Polytechnic University of Kiev. On the day of the defense, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Paton defended his diploma thesis for the best mark, but he directly experienced the bombing of Kiev on the day of the defense. He could not get a red diploma, because out of philosophy he defended the exam only for three, even for the corrective term. However, it is not important to study for the best results, but to go through and get as much out of the study as possible. Boris Paton used the basics of studies like few others.
Since the beginning of II. World War was in the Soviet Union in the first place the defense of the state against an aggressive enemy. After a short job in the Krasnoe Sormovo plant, he started in 1942 to the Institute of Electric Welding E. O. Paton of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, where he worked until his death in 2020. During II. World War, together with his father, he significantly contributed to the construction of the ar-mor and command tower of the T-34 tank, as well as to the creation of welding machines that welded tanks ten times faster and more reliably than manual welders. Also thanks to Boris Paton, the USSR won II. Wo-rld War.
After the relocation of the E. O. Paton Institute of Electric Welding from the evacuation in the Urals to Kiev, Boris Paton has been working since 1945 as Deputy Director. In the same year he defended his dissertation (PhD.). He participated in the construction of the first all-welded bridge – the Patona Bridge in Kiev, which he constructed with his father. In 1952 he defended his Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) degree. In 1953, after the death of his father, he took up the position of director of the E. O. Paton Institute of Electric Welding. He has been a member of the editorial board of Science and Life since the 1960s. He designed welds on the rocket of the world’s first cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin. From 1962 he was president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He held this position until his death. Leonid Brezhnev resolutely rejected the offer to lead the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. The reason was that he could not leave the position of director of the Institute of Electric Welding, which he held after his father.
He warned against the construction of a Chernobyl nuclear power plant, opposed Academician Alexandrov, who told him it was safe. After its explosion, he showed unparalleled bravery. He flew on a helicopter over an exploded reactor, coordinated the evacuation, advised on how to eliminate a terrible accident. He hurried to forget to take a protective liner into the helicopter and direct the evacuation without any protection. Ne-vertheless, he did not receive active radiation syndrome, and later did not develop cancer. He saved the world from a nuclear disaster. When the shells of atomic missiles in the Soviet Union threatened to rupture and radioactive bombs exploded, Paton made the shells safe with his welds. When he suffered an injury in 1995 – a hip fracture on water skis, he rep-rimanded doctors for letting his bones grow and not boil them. After this incident, he developed a revolutionary method of welding bones, and later welding of human tissues. He achieved great success in this field and was also highly regarded in medicine. He also developed rail welding to allow trains to run on them at high speeds. Thanks to Paton, high-speed trains run on the rails.
He developed the first weld underwater, underground, as well as in space. He has authored 400 inventions, more than 1,000 publications and more than 20 monographs. He became a full member of about two dozen academies of sciences within the planet. He has received many top honors, including the prestigious Stalin and Lenin Awards. He was a two-time holder of the Socialist Labor Hero and the holder of the Hero of Ukraine Award.
Despite health problems in the form of a sick heart with tenacity, regular sports, especially swimming, but also tennis, he managed to survive in work and high managerial positions until 2020. His health problems finally caught up with him, he died of cardiac arrest on August 19, 2020. He had an incomplete three months to live to be 102. Despite his advanced age, he could do much more for mankind in the scientific field. Although he was not running for president of the Academy of Sciences in the 2020 election, he planned to continue to run the E. O. Paton Institute for Electric Welding, as he said in an July 2020 interview. In one of the last interviews, when asked what he would like, he stated the prolongation of a person’s life.
One of the most important scientists in history has left. Those who met him knew him as a selfless, heartfelt and energetic man. May he rest in peace!