The National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” is known in Ukraine and worldwide for its many scientific schools. Among them are the pioneering schools of chemical production processes and equipment, as well as polymer materials processing processes and equipment, established at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering (renamed the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology in 1999 and the Faculty of Automation, Industrial Engineering and Ecology in 2025). An invaluable contribution to the establishment and development of these two scientific schools was made by Yurii Yukhymovych Lukach, a participant in the Second World War, Doctor of Engineering, Honoured Professor of the university, Professor of the Department of Machinery and Equipment for Chemical and Petroleum Processing Industries, and Head of the Department from 1973 to 1999.
The life of Yurii Yukhymovych Lukach spans an entire era: the hungry and brutal 1930s, the devastating years of the Second World War, the difficult postwar years of rebuilding a devastated country, and the first years of independent Ukraine.
Yurii Lukach was born on September 11, 1926, in the village of Khvostivtsi, Nemyriv District, Vinnytsia Region, into a family of civil servants. These were times when talented specialists were “sent” to the most responsible positions across the vast Soviet Union. Yurii Yukhymovych’s father, Yukhym Serhiiovych, was among them, which explains the family’s changing places of residence: Vinnytsia from 1933, Saratov from 1935, Kyiv from 1938, and Tula from 1941, where Yukhym Serhiiovych was appointed director of one of the defense plants.
After graduating from secondary school in 1943, Yurii Lukach entered the Moscow Aviation Institute. However, his studies there did not last long. Immediately after the liberation of Kyiv in the autumn of that year, the family moved back to the Ukrainian capital, and Yurii transferred to Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. He graduated in 1948 — the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute — with a qualification in mechanical engineering.
The young specialist was assigned to the Research Institute of the Ministry of Motor Transport of the Ukrainian SSR. Yurii Lukach worked there as a senior engineer for two years, until he entered the postgraduate program at the Department of Machinery and Equipment for Chemical Production at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in 1950. After completing his postgraduate studies, he defended his Candidate of Technical Sciences dissertation, titled “Investigation of Heat Transfer during the Boiling of Binary Mixtures,” and began working as an assistant at the Kyiv Technological Institute of Silicates. When the institute was incorporated into Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in 1954, Yurii Lukach’s professional and academic life became inseparably linked with Kyiv Polytechnic for the next six decades.
Assistant, senior lecturer, acting associate professor, associate professor, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Dean of the Evening Faculty — these were the successive stages of Yurii Lukach’s academic career, accompanied by continuous research in the promising new field of polymer materials processing. Two years after defending his Doctor of Technical Sciences dissertation in 1971, titled “Investigation of Non-Isothermal Processes in Thermoplastics Processing,” Yurii Lukach was awarded the academic title of professor and became Head of the Department of Machinery and Equipment for Chemical Production, which he led for twenty-seven years. For many years, he served as Deputy Chair of the Methodological Council of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute; a member of the Scientific and Methodological Committee on Chemical Technology of the Ministry of Higher and Specialized Secondary Education of the USSR; a member of the Council of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR on Thermal Technology; and a member of the Scientific and Technical Committee of the State Committee for Science and Technology of the USSR. He also chaired a specialized Academic Council responsible for the defense of doctoral dissertations. From 1975, he served as Chief Scientific Consultant to the flagship of the Soviet chemical engineering industry, the Kyiv “Bolshevik” Production Association, now JSC “First Kyiv Machine-Building Plant.” Under Yurii Lukach’s supervision, 35 doctoral and Candidate of Technical Sciences dissertations were defended, and more than 2,000 highly qualified mechanical engineers were trained.
In scientific debates, Yurii Yukhymovych knew how to prevail without wounding the pride of those he had defeated, and how to lose without compromising his dignity or the respect of others. Wisdom and composure were among his defining qualities. At the same time, Yurii Lukach was distinguished by an exceptionally high level of communication with students and faculty, university administrators and subordinates alike. Moreover, unlike many leaders, he had a subtle appreciation of humour and knew how to value it.
Yurii Lukach authored and co-authored more than 300 publications, including a two-volume textbook and a two-volume study guide, eleven monographs, and more than one hundred intellectual property documents for inventions and utility models, including patents and other protection documents obtained in leading countries around the world. He was also a two-time recipient of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute Award for the best textbook, study guide, and monograph.
The monographs he prepared — Worm Machines for Processing Plastics and Rubber Compounds (1965), Roll Machines for Processing Plastics and Rubber Compounds (1967), and Mixing Machines for Plastics and Rubber Compounds (1972) — have remained reference books for researchers, designers, inventors, and students for more than half a century.
Professor Lukach was among the pioneers of the widespread introduction of computer technology and research findings into the educational process. Two of the first three MIR-2 computers at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute were put into operation precisely at the Department of Machinery and Equipment for Chemical Production. During his tenure as Head of the Department, the scope of its research activities increased substantially, making it possible to multiply the number of laboratory classes several times over. One of Yurii Yukhymovych’s fundamental requirements was to incorporate research findings into the educational process, both as independent specialized courses and as individual sections of existing disciplines. Every member of the teaching staff — from assistants to professors — was expected to develop methodological guidelines for applying computer technology in education, including algorithms for calculating specific types of process and auxiliary equipment.
It was also at the department headed by Yurii Yukhymovych — one of the first at the institute to receive the honorary title of “Model Department” — that an experiment was introduced involving visiting state examination commissions conducting defenses of genuinely practical diploma projects directly at industrial enterprises. The author of these lines witnessed such defenses in the summer of 1989 at the Kyiv “Bolshevik” Research and Production Association, when former students, by then working as designers at the Special Design Bureau for Polymer Engineering (SKBpolimermash), defended their own designs. These designs were manufactured in the association’s production workshops according to their drawings and under their direct supervision. A distinctive feature of the defenses was that the graphic sections of the diploma projects were presented as blueprints, while the original “whites” were kept in the SKB archives.
Thanks to the productive work of Professor Yurii Lukach, a recipient of the USSR Excellence in Education award, with the Ministry of the Chemical Industry, the Ministry of Chemical and Petroleum Machinery, and the Ministries of Industrial Construction Materials of the Ukrainian SSR and the USSR, the Faculty of Chemical Engineering received a new academic building, Building No. 19, in 1978.
Under Yurii Lukach’s leadership and with his personal involvement, in close cooperation with the “Bolshevik” Research and Production Association — the leading enterprise in the former USSR in the field of polymer engineering — and the Ukrainian Research Institute for the Development of Machinery and Equipment for Processing Plastics, Rubber, and Artificial Leather (UkrNDIplastmash), numerous samples of highly efficient equipment for processing plastics and rubber compounds were designed and manufactured.
It should also be remembered that Yurii Lukach chaired the commission responsible for drafting the first Charter of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute after Ukraine gained independence. At his initiative, the university also established the honorary titles of “Honoured Professor of Igor Sikorsky Polytechnic Institute,” “Honoured Lecturer of Igor Sikorsky Polytechnic Institute,” “Honoured Scientist of Igor Sikorsky Polytechnic Institute,” and “Honoured Employee of Igor Sikorsky Polytechnic Institute.”
Many of those who had the opportunity to work and communicate with Yurii Yukhymovych will always remember his words: “An engineer is a work of art, and art cannot be mass-produced,” as well as: “A professor should be ashamed to give lectures based solely on material already available in existing textbooks.” Life itself has demonstrated the wisdom of these words: training a highly qualified specialist requires extraordinary effort from both the teacher and the student. It is no coincidence that Yurii Yukhymovych often repeated: “You cannot teach someone! You can learn!” By this, he meant that even the most talented teacher is powerless without the learner’s own desire to acquire knowledge.
Exceptional integrity, honesty, and fairness in his relationships with students, colleagues, and university administrators enabled Yurii Yukhymovych to look openly and confidently into the eyes of everyone with whom he interacted throughout nearly sixty years of academic and teaching work. One telling example is that in the late 1950s, evening-program students — many of whom, including veterans of the front, were older than Yurii Lukach, who was then Dean of the Evening Faculty — respectfully referred to him behind his back as “Batya,” meaning “Dad.”
Yurii Yukhymovych was one of the finest teachers and an outstanding lecturer. For generations of students, he remained a model of what a university professor should be. His students not only respected and valued him — they practically revered him. During examinations, he formulated his questions in such a way that they often already contained half of the answer. In teaching, he believed that the desire for change was not always evidence of a progressive approach, while adherence to tried-and-tested traditions was not necessarily a sign of conservatism. He also believed that the primary task of higher education should not be to produce a fully “finished” specialist, but rather to educate professionals capable of thinking and working independently. And one more thing: Professor Lukach never routinely gave high marks, nor did he demand this of his colleagues, as he reasonably believed that an exceptionally high level of academic achievement could itself be an indication of a low standard of the educational process.
When a serious illness eventually confined Yurii Lukach to his home, he repeatedly told the author of these lines how much he missed the institute — his beloved Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, which he never learned to call a university — and the opportunity to interact with his students, to whom he had devoted almost his entire life. And he would often add, with bitterness in his voice: “The tragedy is not that the body grows old, but that the soul remains young.”
Yurii Yukhymovych Lukach passed away on June 13, 2014. Yet his family, as well as his many students and colleagues, will always remember him as a Scientist, an Educator, and an Intellectual who made a significant contribution to the development of the renowned Kyiv Polytechnics.