Barys kit

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Barys Kit at the age of 105 (2015)

Barys Uladsimirawitsch Kit ( Belarusian Барыс Уладзіміравіч Кіт ; born March 24 . Jul / 6. April  1910 greg. In St. Petersburg , Russian Empire ; † 1. February 2018 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a Belarusian mathematicians , physicists , chemists and rocket scientists . At 107 he was the oldest resident of Frankfurt am Main.

Life

Training and activity as a teacher

Barys Kit was born as the only child to a Belarusian father and a Russian mother in the Russian capital, St. Petersburg, where his father was an official in the Central Post and Telegraph Authority. In 1918 his father and his family fled the revolution to Karelitschy, his birthplace in the part of Belarus that had come to Poland from 1919 as a result of the Polish-Soviet war . Here Kit first attended a Polish school and then the Belarusian lyceum in Nawahrudak , which he graduated in 1928. He studied physics and mathematics at Vilnius University - as he later said, he spontaneously decided on the subject because the historians' registration queue was too long. Active in Belarusian student groups, he was arrested twice by the Polish authorities for political reasons. During his studies he began to teach mathematics at the Belarusian Lyceum in Vilnius in 1932 . After he had completed his studies in 1933 with the master's examination and in 1934 with the state examination for teaching, he became a teacher at this school and in 1939 its director. After the city was annexed to Lithuania in 1939 in the wake of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact , Kit returned to the Belarusian SSR in Nawahrudak, where he became director of his previous school, worked in teacher training and eventually became a school inspector for a large school district. Here he was involved in the establishment of a large number of Belarusian schools within just one year.

Second World War and emigration

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union , Kit worked during the German occupation of Belarus from 1941 to 1944, initially as a teacher in the village of Lebedewo near Maladsetschna and later as the director of the teachers' college in Pastawy . Suspected of being linked to partisans, he was arrested by the SD for a month and threatened with shooting. However, his students were able to obtain his release. In 1943, Kit received permission from the occupiers to open a trade school in Maladsetschna. As its director, he opposed the National Socialist policy of denying the inhabitants of the occupied territories in the east any higher education by secretly attempting to raise the teaching program to university level and giving the students, in addition to their professional training, a comprehensive knowledge of the history and culture of Belarus convey. When the German authorities became aware of this, Kit was threatened with arrest again and the school was ordered to be closed. He managed to postpone the closure so long that most of the students graduated.

Since he had been headmaster under the German occupation, Kit had to expect to be persecuted as a collaborator under Stalin . In 1944, therefore, married and father of a son born in 1941, he fled with his family from the Red Army to Germany , first to Opfenbach / Myweiler near Lindau and then to Munich .

Worked in the USA and moved to Germany

From 1945 to 1948 Kit worked as a mathematics teacher at the Ukrainian Lyceum in Munich and studied medicine at the Ludwig Maximilians University at the same time . At the end of 1948 he emigrated with his family to the USA, first to South River (New Jersey) , where he worked in the pharmaceutical industry and supported Belarusian emigrants. His second son was born here. In 1950 he moved to Los Angeles , where he worked as a chemist for various companies. After a chance encounter with a scientist of Polish descent, he switched to North American Aviation , where he worked on the Navaho project for an ICBM. He recognized the potential of liquid hydrogen as a rocket fuel, and in 1960 he co-authored the first fundamental handbook on the subject. After the Navaho project was discontinued in 1958, Kit worked as a mathematician and systems analyst for the Astronautics Bureau of the US Air Force and from 1963 for the Astronautics Bureau of the ITT Corporation . Among other things, he worked on the mathematical basis for the broadband communication system of the Apollo project under Wernher von Braun for NASA . In the race of systems during the Cold War , Kit's combination of scientific expertise and excellent knowledge of Russian was particularly valuable for observing developments in space technology in the Soviet Union and for communicating with Soviet scientists; Among other things, he led the US delegation at the first bilateral meeting in preparation for the Apollo-Soyuz test project .

In addition to his work for the US space program, Kit took on research assignments for the Federal Highway Administration and the National Bureau of Standards and taught mathematics at the University of Maryland . In 1972 he came to Heidelberg as a professor at the University of Maryland University College , which offers university courses for US military personnel worldwide. In Germany he met his new partner and after retiring he settled permanently in Frankfurt am Main.

In 1983 he was with a thesis on the Polish-born mathematician Antoni Zygmund at the University of Regensburg Dr. phil. PhD . In 1995 he received the Hermann Oberth Medal of the IFR .

Kit was only able to visit his home country again after Belarus gained independence in 1991. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hrodna in 1994 , and the author Lidia Sivik has published two books about his life. Barys Kit was still critical of the political situation under Belarusian President Aljaksandr Lukashenka in old age .

From 2010 until his death, Kit lived in the old people's home of the Jewish community in Frankfurt-Bornheim . At the time of his death, his younger son Victor was living as a surgeon in the USA, the older one had already passed away.

Kit died on February 1, 2018 at the age of 107 and was buried in the Orthodox cemetery in Wiesbaden .

Fonts

  • (with Douglas S. Evered): Rocket Propellant Handbook. The Macmillan Company, New York 1960.
  • USSR space program: Manpower, training, and research developments. University of Maryland, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, College Park 1964.
  • Antoni Zygmund, his life and his contribution to the development of mathematics in the 20th century. Phil. Diss. University of Regensburg 1983.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g G. I. Shostak: Boris Kit . Archives of Belarus, accessed February 3, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b c Elisa Kautzky: The mathematics professor Barys Kit helped the Americans to fly to the moon: Elder Frankfurt turns 107 . Frankfurter Neue Presse , March 24, 2017, accessed on February 3, 2018.
  3. ↑ Alard von Kittlitz: rocket researcher Boris Kit: A century of life. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . March 25, 2010. Retrieved July 13, 2012 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e Morand Fachot: “A great and interesting life”. In: IEC e-tech 03/2013. April 10, 2013, accessed February 3, 2018 .
  5. ^ A b c Felix Ackermann: One hundred and five year old Boris Kit. In the cosmos of the twentieth century. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from 4./5. April 2015; Digitized at faz.net, accessed on February 3, 2018.
  6. ↑ Official documents relating to Kit's life & activities in the Belarusian State Archives for Scientific and Technical Documentation (BGANTD), accessed on February 3, 2018.
  7. ↑ stay in Opfenbach / Myweiler. Source: Opfenbach / Allgäu municipal archive.
  8. ↑ Great Belarusian Military Commanders: Barys Kit (Boris Kit) . Belarusian Cities guide, accessed February 3, 2018.
  9. ↑ Frankfurt's oldest citizen Boris Kit was 107 years old. In: Bornheimer Wochenblatt of March 28, 2017, accessed on February 3, 2018.
  10. ↑ Barys Kit: Imprisonment seems to be Belarusians' fate. Charter 97 , April 6, 2011, accessed July 13, 2012 .
  11. ↑ a b Барыса Кіта пахавалі пад бел-чырвона-белым сьцягам. In: Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty . February 15, 2018, accessed February 15, 2018 (Belarusian).
  12. ↑ Памёр самы стары беларус сьвету, асьветнік і навуковец Барыс Кіт. In: Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty . February 2, 2018, accessed February 2, 2018 (Belarusian).
personal data
SURNAME Kit, Barys
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kit, Barys Uladsimirawitsch (full name); Кіт, Барыс Уладзіміравіч (Belarusian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belarusian mathematician, physicist and chemist
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint Petersburg , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH 1st February 2018
Place of death Frankfurt am Main