Janusz Zakrzewski 1932–2008
Janusz Zakrzewski passed away on 26 October 2008 in Warsaw, Poland, after a long illness.
Zakrzewski studied physics at the University of Warsaw and obtained a PhD in physics at Bristol University in 1961. He was employed at the University of Warsaw from 1956 until his retirement in 2002. In the early stage of his career he was involved in emulsion studies of hypernuclei and participated in the discovery of heavy hypernuclei, as well as the first observation of a double hypernucleus in 1963. In the following years he was involved in K meson physics at the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory in the UK and in studies of interactions of high-energy hadrons with nuclei at Dubna and Serpukhov. In 1983/1984 he took part in the UA2 Collaboration at CERN.
He was an active member of the Polish physics community and a renowned academic. Always interested in teaching, he devoted much effort to the education of young physicists, which he regarded as important as scientific research. He had a natural ability for the clear expression of thoughts and his public appearances were always perfectly prepared. He is also a co-author (with A K Wróblewski) of a popular Polish student textbook on basic physics.
Zakrzewski was an energetic proponent of co-operation between Polish and German universities and scientific institutions in the 1970s and 1980s, when Polish–German political relations were uneasy. His efforts resulted in a collaboration with DESY, which started with small-scale participation in the TASSO group and soon transformed into the full involvement of the Polish high-energy-physics community in the HERA project and the ZEUS and H1 experiments.
He was vice-rector of the University of Warsaw (1981–1982) and held functions at the Faculty of Physics. He was dean of the Faculty (1972–1975); and head of the High-Energy Physics Department (1971–1994). In 1976 he was elected member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He was a member of the European Physical Society and received the society's Cecil Powell Medal in 1990. He was also president of the Polish Physical Society (1987–1991) and was honoured by the Marian Smoluchowski–Emil Warburg Medal of the Polish Physical Society–Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft in 2001.
Zakrzewski had many cultural interests including music, history and literature. He will be missed as a good friend, a passionate physicist, a person with a lively sense of humour and impeccable manners.
Jacek Ciborowski.
Anatoly Moskalev 1936–2009
Anatoly Nikolaevich Moskalev died on 18 January at the age of 73. He had suffered following a severe stroke five years ago.
For almost 50 years Moskalev contributed to various parts of physics including high-energy physics and physics of nuclei, but he is best known as one of the pioneers of the development of a specific branch of atomic physics: the investigation of parity-violating processes in atoms. This where the Standard Model of electroweak interactions, which was invented to describe what happens at energies of about 1011 eV, manifests itself in radiation from atoms that involves energies of about 10 eV. Work on this subject is still ongoing and several people who started their studies together with Moskalev at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute continue their investigations in universities in the US, the UK and Australia.
In 1975, together with D A Varshalovich and V K Khersonsky, Moskalev published the monograph Quantum theory of angular momentum. It was translated into many languages and became widely known, providing the most complete coverage of the subject. It is remarkable that to this day only two misprints have been found in the book, which is mainly a reference book, containing many formulas and tables.
For many years Moskalev gave lectures on classical electrodynamics and later on relativistic quantum theory at the St Petersburg Polytechnical University. His students remember him as one of the most popular professors, whose lectures were clear and full of physics meaning. These lectures formed the book Relativistic field theory, published in Russian several years ago.
In the 1990s Moskalev held high positions in the administration of the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute – at the time of a deep crisis in the Russian economy, caused by the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Moskalev did his best to lessen the consequence of this crisis for the institute employees.
We shall remember him as a bright physicist, an excellent professor, a skilful administrator and simply a kind and friendly person.
His colleagues and friends.