Steponas Kairys

Steponas Kairys ( pronunciation ; December 20, 1878 Old Style/January 3, 1879 New Style in Užnevėžiai, near Ukmergė – December 16, 1964 in Brooklyn) was a Lithuanian engineer, nationalist, and social democrat. He was among the 20 men to sign the Act of Independence of Lithuania on February 16, 1918.

Born in the Anykščiai district, then in Imperial Russia, Kairys graduated from the Institute of Technology in Saint Petersburg. Due to conflicts with the academic administration concerning his participation in student clubs and dissident demonstrations, his studies were intermittently interrupted. Following graduation he worked for several years in railroad construction in the Samara and Kursk regions of Russia. He returned to Lithuania in 1912 and worked on city sanitation and water supply systems in Vilnius, and following the Polish occupation of the city left to the temporary capital of Lithuania, Kaunas. After 1923, he taught at the University of Lithuania in Kaunas, where in 1940, he received an honorary doctorate in engineering.

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