Virchenko, Nina Opanasivna

VIRCHENKO, NINA OPANASIVNA (b. May 5, 1930, in Zavadivka, Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi raion, Cherkasy oblast).
Mathematician, educator, participant in the Ukrainian resistance movement.
Her father, a former officer in the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR), taught his daughter to be brave and to be first in everything. Her mother, a paramedic-midwife, knew almost the entire *Kobzar* by heart. From a young age, Nina showed an aptitude for mathematics. In January 1937, the family moved from the Shevchenko region to the Zhytomyr region, to the town of Chervone, where they lived until June 1945. Nina was fortunate to have talented, nationally conscious teachers. During the German occupation, her teacher began lessons with a prayer and the Ukrainian national anthem. By her teenage years, Nina’s life motto was “My love is Ukraine and Mathematics.” She came up with the pseudonym UZHMA: *Ukrainka–Zhinka–Matematyk–Astronom* (Ukrainian–Woman–Mathematician–Astronomer). She finished the 10th grade in 1946 at School No. 36 in Zhytomyr. She passed an entrance exam at Moscow University, personally administered by Academician A. Kolmogorov, and was admitted to the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics. However, her father, who accompanied her, advised on the way home that she also submit copies of her documents to the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Kyiv University, where she was admitted without exams as a “gold” medalist. Her parents hid the summons from Moscow: they were afraid to let their 16-year-old daughter go to a distant land, and they would not have had the means to support her.
Nina lived in a dormitory room with 19 other girls, where rats and bedbugs “ran the show.” But she paid no mind to it: “From my first years as a student, I remember most vividly: the joy, the ineffable, incredible pleasure of studying Mathematics, and the unbearable feeling of hunger! It was the famine year of 1947 in Ukraine! During lectures, formulas blurred before my eyes with pieces of bread.” She attended a rocketry and aerodynamics club (the only girl among 29 boys), made 10 parachute jumps, and developed her own projects to improve flight. Meanwhile, she had frank conversations with her colleagues about the history of Ukraine and the UPA’s struggle for independence. She wrote and distributed handwritten leaflets. But her closest friend, Dina Reshetko, informed on her to the NKVD for a year and a half.
On June 28, 1948, Virchenko was arrested, along with other students and professors, and accused of a “political conspiracy, a secretly prepared rebellion.” The basis for Nina’s accusation was the diary she had kept since she was 15. She held herself with dignity during interrogations and did not incriminate any of her friends. On December 11, 1948, she was sentenced by the OSO (Osoboye Soveshchaniye, or Special Council of the NKVD) to 10 years of imprisonment under Articles 54-1a and 54-11 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR (anti-Soviet agitation, organization; the verdict literally stated: “for participation in a ‘Ukrainian-nationalist gang’”).
She served her sentence in the special camps of Ozerlag (Tayshet, Eastern Siberia). Her number was R-840. She worked in logging, in a stone quarry, and on the construction of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station. Hunger, cold, filth, the brutal attitude of the guards, and constant danger hardened the young girl, who even there asked herself every day: “And what did you do for Ukraine today?” While working for a time in the bread-cutting room and in the hospital laboratory, she risked her life to save her compatriots from certain death. She was inspired by the example of girls from Galicia, sentenced for their participation in the OUN’s struggle for independence. For a time, she was imprisoned with Iryna SENYK, Hegumena Yosyfa (Olena Viter), Oksana MESHKO (1950), and the mathematicians Ulyana Kravchenko and Tizuko Nakayama, a Japanese woman. She conducted oral mathematics lessons for the prisoners, writing with a stick on the sand or snow. She composed Ten Commandments for a Ukrainian female political prisoner. She suffered from tuberculosis, and her eyesight weakened.
On January 30, 1954, Virchenko was released, as she had been sentenced as a minor. She returned home on February 6. She tried to enter Kharkiv University, but her “questionnaire” (background file) prevented it. Since there was a shortage of teachers after the war, she was hired in 1954 to teach mathematics and other subjects in a secondary school in the village of Yanushpil, in 1955 in a seven-year school in the village of Ulyanivka, Zhytomyr raion, and in 1957 in Tomashivka, Fastiv raion, Kyiv oblast.
In 1956, she reenrolled in the correspondence department of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Kyiv University, and in 1958, she transferred to the third year of full-time study. In 1961, thanks to Professors G. Polozhiy and I. Lyashko, and Academician I. Shvets, who vouched for the talented graduate, she entered postgraduate studies. In 1964, she defended her Candidate of Sciences dissertation, “The Solution of Certain Mixed Boundary Value Problems for p-Analytic Functions.” She worked as an assistant, a senior lecturer, and from 1967, as an associate professor in the Department of Mathematical Physics at Kyiv State University. She was beloved by her students, who were captivated by her living example of service to science. In 1964, she married the recently released political prisoner Rostyslav DOTSENKO, a talented translator. Their daughters, Maria and Olena, were born. Virchenko corresponded with former political prisoners, met with friends from her time of captivity, and helped them.
During another wave of arrests of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, the dean of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, S. T. Zavalo, and the rector, M. U. Bilyi, at the demand of the KGB, sought Virchenko’s resignation “of her own accord” as an unrehabilitated nationalist. She was watched, and like her husband, was repeatedly summoned for “conversations,” subjected to open and secret searches, and had listening devices installed in their apartment; provocations were staged against them.
She was forced to submit her resignation. From 1974 to 1990, she worked as an associate professor at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. She was only able to defend her doctoral dissertation on “New Types of Paired (Triple) Integral Equations with Special Functions” during perestroika, after numerous successful presentations at seminars at Moscow University and other scientific centers.
Since 1990, Virchenko has been a professor at the National Technical University “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.” Her interests include the theory of differential and integral equations, special functions and integral transforms, and their application to problems in applied mathematics and mechanics. Her body of work includes over 350 scientific and methodological publications. Among them are 22 books, some of which have been published in foreign languages (English, Japanese, and Russian).
As early as 1965, Virchenko came across the name of the outstanding mathematician Mykhailo Kravchuk in scientific literature—the teacher of future academicians Serhiy Korolyov and Arkhyp Lyulka. She discovered that M. Kravchuk had been repressed in 1938 and died in Kolyma in 1942. Annually, beginning in 1992, Virchenko has organized international mathematical conferences in memory of M. Kravchuk, collected and published his surviving works, and successfully campaigned for a monument to him (2003) and the naming of a street in Kyiv in his honor. She compiled and published three of his books (2000–2004) and, together with director Oleksandr Ryabokrys, created the documentary film “The Golgotha of Academician Kravchuk” (2004). In 2006, Ryabokrys made a film about her, “UZHMA.”
Virchenko has presented scientific papers in many countries, is a member of a dozen foreign mathematical societies, and has received prestigious awards: the Order of Yaroslav the Wise (1999, 2005), the “Builder of Ukraine” medal (2001), the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called (2005), the “Petro Mohyla” badge (2007), the “Lecturer-Researcher” badge (2008), Leading Scientist of the World-2010 (Cambridge), and the Medal of St. Volodymyr (2010).
Virchenko has written a series of essays on former political prisoners (about I. SENYK, O. Viter, B. Biyovska, O. MESHKO, family friend Yu. LYTVYN, and the legendary dissident writer Ye. KONTSEVYCH), as well as on Ukrainian scientists Mykhailo Ostrohradsky, Georgy Voronoy, M. Kravchuk, A. Lyulka, Ye. Viktorovsky, and others. Of particular value are her human rights works, “On the Prohibition of the Ukrainian Language (17th–20th centuries)” and “A Few Words on Ukrainian Mathematical Terminology,” and her book of memoirs, *Grains from the Roads of My Life...*.
Virchenko is a Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, a professor in the Department of Higher Mathematics at the National Technical University “KPI,” academician-secretary of the mathematics department of the Academy of Higher School of Ukraine, vice-president of the Academy of Higher School (1998), a member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, a laureate of the First Prize of the NTUU “KPI” (1998), an Honored Lecturer of the NTUU “KPI” (1999), an Honored Worker of Education of Ukraine (2006), and head of the Scientific and Methodological Council of the All-Ukrainian Society of Political Prisoners and Victims of Repression (1995–2005).
She was rehabilitated in 1991.

Bibliography:
1.
*Mathematics in Aphorisms, Quotations, and Sayings*. Kyiv: Vyshcha shkola, 1974. 272 pp.
“Knight of Aviation (about Arkhyp Lyulka).” *Slovo Prosvity*, no. 18, April 30–May 6, 2003.
“And I Will Not Let Anyone Defile His Name (About T. Shevchenko).” *Kyiv*, no. 1, 2003, pp. 118-121.
“Taras Shevchenko in My Life.” *Svoboda*, August 15, 2003.
“Iryna Senyk—Hero of Ukraine.” *Ukrainian Women in History*. Kyiv: Lybid, 2004, pp. 270-275.
“She Served God and Ukraine: On the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Mother Hegumena Yosyfa (O. Viter).” *Shliakh peremohy*, February 25, 2004.
*Essays on the Methodology of Teaching Higher Mathematics*. Kyiv: Zadruha, 2006. 396 pp.
*For God, for Ukraine (About O. Viter)*. Kyiv, 2007. 248 pp.
*A Giant of Ukrainian Mathematics (About M. Kravchuk)*. Kyiv: Zadruha, 2007. 80 pp.
“From Kolyma to Worldwide Scientific Fame.” *Promin*, Lviv, no. 41, 2007, pp. 23-30.
“The Mathematical Meteor—Yevhen Viktorovsky.” *Matematyka v shkoli*, no. 4, 2007, pp. 54-56.
“On the Prohibition of the Ukrainian Language (17th–20th centuries).” *Nashe zhyttia*, New York, no. 1-8, 2008; http://www.anvsu.org.ua/index.files/Articles/Virchenko1.htm ; http://forumkyiv.at.ua/forum/15-818-1.
“A Few Words on Ukrainian Mathematical Terminology.” *Osvita i upravlinnia*, vol. 12, no. 1, 2009, pp. 139-144.
*Grains from the Roads of My Life... (Memoirs)*. Kyiv: Zadruha, 2011. 760 pp. + 48 illustrations.
2.
Bozhko, S. “Unsubjugated Daughter of an Unsubjugated Country.” *Through Women's Eyes*. Kyiv, 1997, pp. 25-26.
Boshko, S. “Unsubjugated Daughter of an Unsubjugated Country.” *Through Women's Eyes*. Kyiv, 1997, pp. 25-26.
Shtynko, V. S. “My Love Is Ukraine and Mathematics.” In: *We in History*. Kyiv: ZhTs “Spadshchyna,” 1998, pp. 186-190.
Orel, Maiia. “Nina Virchenko. Her Love Is Ukraine and Mathematics.” In: *Ukrainian Women in History*, edited by V. Borysenko. Kyiv: Lybid, 2004, pp. 278-282.
Buldyhin, V. “Her Life Is Ukraine and Mathematics.” *In the World of Mathematics*, vol. 11, issue 3, 2005, pp. 61-68.
*Nina Opanasivna Virchenko: A Bibliography of Works*. Edited by M. I. Drobnokhod. Kyiv: Zadruha, 2005, 2010. 60 pp.
Malyuta, I. “She Passed on the Faith.” *Shliakh peremohy*, April 27, 2005.
*The Resistance Movement in Ukraine: 1960–1990. An Encyclopedic Guide*. Foreword by Osyp Zinkevych and Oles Obertas. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2010, pp. 113-114; 2nd ed., 2012, pp. 125-126.
“Nina Opanasivna Virchenko. Her Life: Ukraine and Mathematics”: http://kpi.ua/virchenko