Professor Antanas Žvironas

Professor Antanas Žvironas (1899, Užpaliai–1954) was an alumnus of Vytautas Magnus University (1928), Doctor of Philosophy (1933) at the University of Zurich (Switzerland), assistant and, later, associate professor at the Department of Experimental Physics of Vytautas Magnus University (1928-1940), professor at Vilnius University (1940-1945), a dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, chair of the Departments of general physics and experimental physics (1944-1945). The doctoral thesis of the future professor and, later, his habilitation work were focused on research into hyperfine structure of the mercury resonance line and the Zeeman Effect of the hyperfine structure of optically excited mercury resonance line 2537 Ǻ. In 1940, Žvironas was transferred to Vilnius University, elected a professor and appointed the first dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics (1944–1945). He chaired two departments, those of general physics (1944) and experimental physics. In 1945, the professor was arrested and sentenced to ten years of prison and five years of exile for betrayal of ‘the Soviet homeland’, anti-Soviet activities and their organization. His health began to fail in Soviet prisons and gulags. In 1954 he was released from a prison in Moscow and returned to Lithuania, where he did not last for even three months. The case of Prof. Antanas Žvironas was revised still in Soviet Lithuania, in 1988, and he was rehabilitated. During the Holocaust, the professor rescued Jews: he was the rescuer of Jokūbas Žirnauskas, Associate Professor of Vilnius University, also a Memory Diploma nominee. In 1992, Professor Antanas Žvironas was awarded the Life Saving Cross for helping the Jews. In 1999, a plaque was attached to the wall of professor’s house at 4 Didžioji Street in Vilnius.

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