Jonas Kubilius

Jonas Kubilius was happily married. He deeply loved his wife and the couple shared a happy marriage. They had a son Kestutis who became a mathematician and a daughter Birute who became a professor of medicine.

He lived a long and productive life and breathed his last on 30 October 2011, at the age of 90.

Jonas Kubilius was born on 27 July 1921 in Fermos village, Eržvilkas county, Jurbarkas district municipality, Lithuania. He was from a family of farmers. He had four younger brothers.

He received his early education from Rudkiškiai grade school and Eržvilkas middle school before enrolling at the Raseiniai high school from where he graduated in 1940.

He was a good student and excelled in academics. His favorite subjects were mathematics and literature. He was particularly brilliant in mathematics and even helped his teacher in explaining difficult concepts to his class mates.

He entered the University of Vilnius to study mathematics and graduated summa cum laude in 1946. In between, he had taken a year off to teach mathematics in middle school.

After graduation, Jonas Kubilius was employed as an assistant in the Department of Physics and Mathematics. He held this position for two years (1946–48).

After receiving his Candidate’s degree, Jonas Kubilius started working at the Institute of Physics and Technology of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. He also took up a second part-time teaching position as a lecturer at the university in 1952, simultaneously working at two jobs.

In 1952, he published ‘On some problems of the geometry of prime numbers’ in which he developed the "analytical number-theory in n dimensions" introduced by Hecke and extended the theory with the use of more powerful methods.

By now he had set his eyes on writing a doctoral thesis. He was advised by Linnik to submit his thesis to the USSR Academy of Sciences rather than the Lithuanian Academy.

Unable to get into the USSR Academy of Sciences, Jonas Kubilius started working on his doctorate at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in Moscow and received his Doctor of Science degree (habilitation) in 1957.

During the 1950s the Vilnius University was going through difficult times. Juozas Bulovas who became the Rector of the University in 1956 was trying to make the university “Lithuanian” by encouraging the use of the Lithuanian language in place of Russian and to revive the Department of Lithuanian Literature.

He received the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas, the Lithuanian Presidential Award for his outstanding contribution to the field of mathematics.