Father of electroslag welding who led Ukraine's Academy of Sciences for 58 years
“Science is the essence of my life, and the Academy is not merely my job but my only family.”
Boris Paton presided over the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences for 58 years, from 1962 until his death in 2020. A pioneer of electric welding, he led development of electroslag welding in the 1950s, enabling joints of unlimited thickness that transformed Soviet heavy industry. During WWII he helped accelerate tank production at the Krasnoye Sormovo plant in Gorky. He directed space welding research, producing devices cosmonauts used in orbit, and adapted the technology to medicine with a method for joining living tissues now widely used in surgery. Twice Hero of Socialist Labour and a CPSU Central Committee member, he warned against building the Chernobyl plant near Kyiv and defended Ukrainian scientific autonomy through the Soviet collapse.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1941–1942Engineer, Krasnoye Sormovo Factory, Gorky
- 1942–1953Researcher → Deputy Director, E.O. Paton Electric Welding Institute
- 1953–2020Director, E.O. Paton Electric Welding Institute
- 1962–2020President, Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR / NAS of Ukraine
- 1962–1989Deputy, USSR Supreme Soviet (Deputy Chair, Soviet of the Union 1966–1989)
- 1966–1991Member, CPSU Central Committee
Related historical events
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarFactory engineer who aided tank productionDuring WWII, he helped accelerate tank production at the Krasnoye Sormovo plant in Gorky.
- 1986The Chernobyl DisasterOpponent of the plant's construction · accident liquidatorIn the early 1970s and 1980s he advised the Soviet authorities not to build the Chernobyl plant near Kyiv, but was ignored. After the disaster he participated as a liquidator, and the Paton Institute provided remote welding technologies for contaminated areas.
Stewardship of the Academy after the Soviet collapse
As president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Paton personally managed the upheaval that followed the Soviet collapse. Elected in 1962, he was returned each time on an uncontested basis, most recently in 2015, and he did not stand in the election scheduled for April 2020. He remained in the post until his death, becoming the oldest and longest-serving president of a state academy of sciences in the world.
After 1991 the Academy entered a prolonged crisis of shrinking budgets and staff. Its workforce, about 89,000 in 1991, stood at 40,000 on 1 January 2014, and the rate of decline accelerated after 2014. More than 6,000 staff were lost in 2016 alone, leaving 31,129 employees (including 15,919 researchers) at the start of 2017. In April 2017 Paton reported that chronic budget underfunding had led to the closure of six Academy institutions and that the Academy's budget deficit exceeded US$23 million. The Academy nonetheless remained the main recipient of the state funds allocated to scientific research in Ukraine.
His long tenure also provoked open opposition. In the early 1990s mass protests outside the Academy Presidium called for his removal, and Paton came to work by walking through the ranks of demonstrators. Critics pointed out that state officials including Volodymyr Lytvyn and Mykola Azarov were elected to the Academy during his presidency, and that he did not report to its members on the Academy's property, finances and personnel. Facing criticism of his use of the Russian language, Paton answered with a dismissive label for such critics and replied that science is international.