Boris Vasilyevich Bokut (born 27.10.1926) is a Soviet theoretical physicist and an academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR (1980). He was born in the village of Sokolshchina in Minsk Region. He graduated from Byelorussian University (1952). In 1955 — 72 he worked at the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR, and from 1973 he has been rector of Gomel University. His main research concerned electrodynamics and crystal optics. He developed methods for the correct solution of boundary-value problems in the electrodynamics of naturally gyrotropic crystals, and methods of determining all the parameters of gyrotropy from measurements of the polarisation of reflected and transmitted radiation. He studied the laws of the propagation, the reflection and the refraction of electromagnetic waves in gyrotropic crystals, and determined the efficiency of the generation of sum, difference and doubled frequencies as a function of the properties of the radiation and the optical parameters of the nonlinear crystal. He clarified the main aspects of the phenomenon of nonlinear optical activity, and studied the nonlinear ponderomotive action of intense radiation on crystals. Honoured Worker of Science of the Byelorussian SSR (1978).