Borys Paton

Paton died on 19 August 2020 aged 101. He was buried at Baikove Cemetery three days later.

Paton was last re-appointed for another term as chairman of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 2015. Paton did not submit his candidacy for the post in March 2020, which signified that he was leaving the position.

Paton was married to Olha Paton and had a daughter, Yevhenia, who was also a scientist. Yevhenia died in 2009 and four years later, his wife died. After the death of his wife, Paton was cared for by his granddaughter, Olha.

In January 2008 Paton was appointed member of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine by a decree of President Viktor Yushchenko. In the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election he was a proxy for candidate Yulia Tymoshenko. In August 2011 Paton was one of the ten signatories of the so-called "letter of ten", a letter from Ukrainian intelligentsia figures in support of the policy of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Paton was the first person to have been awarded the title of the Hero of Ukraine, this was done in 1998.

In the early 1970s and 1980s Paton had advised the Soviet authorities not to build the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

Paton was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR from 1962 to 1989 (27 years in a row).

Paton joined the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine on 18 November 1958. From 1963 to 1991, he was a member of the USSR Academy of Science. Paton was appointed chairman of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 1962 and held this position until his death. Paton was also offered to head the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow, but he refused. He was convinced that he should work in Kyiv, at his parents' Institute of Electric Welding and the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.

Paton had a doctoral degree in technical sciences after he defended his doctoral dissertation in 1952. In 1952 Paton joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1953 he became head of the Paton Institute of Electric Welding. (The institute founded and formerly led by his father.) Paton never fully denounced Ukraine's past as part of the Soviet Union. In 2019 he declared he was against decommunization policies.

During the Second World War, more precisely in 1941 and 1942, Paton worked and designed electric circuits at the Krasnoye Sormovo Factory No. 112 in Gorky. His designs helped to increase Soviet tank production.

Borys Yevhenovych Paton (Ukrainian: Бори́с Євге́нович Пато́н, Russian: Борис Евгеньевич Патон; 27 November 1918 – 19 August 2020) was a Ukrainian scientist and a long-time chairman of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He was appointed to this post in 1962 and held it until his death. Paton, like his father Evgeny Paton, was famous for his works in electric welding.

Paton was born on 27 November 1918 in Kyiv in the family of scientist and founder of the Paton Institute of Electric Welding in Kyiv, Professor Evgeny Paton. Evgeny Paton was (like his son) famous for his works in electric welding. The first welded bridge in Kyiv, Paton Bridge, was constructed under the supervision of, and named after, Evgeny Paton. Paton junior's mother was a housewife. Paton junior was born in the professors’ residence building of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, where his father was teaching. In 1941, Borys Paton completed the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and became an engineer.