In Memoriam – Vitold Belevitch

✍ Scribed by Joos Vandewalle

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 21 KB
• Volume: 28
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0098-9886
• DOI: 10.1002/1097-007x(200009/10)28:5<429::aid-cta121>3.0.co;2-6

✦ Synopsis

In one of the last days of 1999, Prof. Vitold Belevitch, a monument in the ÿeld of circuit theory and its applications, passed away.

He was born under dramatic circumstances on 2 March 1921 in the small Karelian town of Terijoki in an area which then belonged to Finland. His mother, who was of Polish descent, was eeing from their home town of Petrograd (formerly Leningrad and now called again St Petersburg) from the Bolsheviks. His father, who was Russian and opposed the Bolsheviks, also tried to escape but was arrested and deported to Siberia and never returned. So he never saw his son Vitold. After giving birth, his mother took her baby and continued her journey to Helsinki, where she registered the birth. In 1926 Mrs Belevitch and her son emigrated to Belgium, where he received his education in French. At the age of 16 he started electrical and mechanical engineering studies at the Università e Catholique de Louvain. After graduation during the Second World War in 1942, he joined Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company (BTMC) in Antwerp,