J. Verkelis was born on April 23, 1939, in the village of Varniūnai, Biržai district. In 1958, he graduated from Biržai Secondary School No. 2. In 1963, he became a graduate of Vilnius University.
On February 27, 1973, J. Verkelis defended his doctoral dissertation “Study of the formation and properties of indium polytellurides.” From 1961 to 2003, he worked at the Institute of Semiconductor Physics.
Throughout his scientific career, he wrote 149 publications, of which 32 were inventions of technologies and devices. He researched semiconductor material science, worked with optoelectronic and fiber optic devices and sensors.
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“Hands tremble when writing text because there will no longer be evenings in Jonas’s modest apartment in the Lazdynai microdistrict. Long stories from his childhood about relatives who were book smugglers and local partisans hiding in the bushes near the ‘Rokiškis road.’ And there will be no more calls inviting to visit and enjoy pilaf. Jonas always tried to motivate learning and the pursuit of knowledge. He was especially interested in discussing physics and chemistry. But besides science, Jonas was also a patriot of Lithuania. He never mentioned any bad words about Lithuanian partisans, and he recalled how, as a child, he helped them a little,” wrote J. Verkelis’s nephew Tadas on Facebook.
