Re: Jens-Peer Kuska passed away
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg101509] Re: [mg101427] Jens-Peer Kuska passed away
- From: Thomas Dowling <thomasgdowling at gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 01:54:39 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <64107.76.247.166.94.1246854595.squirrel@webmail.wolfram.com>
I too am very shocked to hear of the tragic news of Jens-Peer Kuska. I benefited a lot from his posts, in particular when I began using Mathematica first. Often, my idiosyncratic questions would produce just a single reply, that being from Jens-Peer. His responses were without exception insightful and to the point, and always enriched my understanding of Mathematica. He seemed to have the knack of knowing exactly where you were at with Mathematica, and of telling you exactly what you needed to know. Thomas Dowling On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 10:05 AM, <mtrott at wolfram.com> wrote: > Dear Mathgroup, > > I am sorry to inform you that Jens-Peer Kuska passed away last week. > He was 45 years old. > > I have known Jens-Peer since the early 80s when we both studied physics > at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Our departments were on opposite > sides of the first floor hallway. > > After Germany's reunification and the availability of more computers > and software, Jens-Peer's favorite program soon become Mathematica. > And he evolved to be a true expert of it. > > His broad and detailed mathematics and physics knowledge allowed > Jens to cover new areas in computer graphics with his OpenGL viewer > and in his work on medical image processing. > > Most of the Mathgroup readers know Jens-Peer from his short, to the point, > helpful, stimulating contributions to Mathgroup, where he contributed so > many times for more than 10 years. > > > http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=OYlIrx8AAACUxZjYdkFuXRkVM5CWP0nj1ZkYyRt9DFmqLZPJWZ3WHA > > And the German-speaking Mathematica user knew him additionally from his > many contribution to the German Mathematica user group: > > > http://www.google.com/#q=Jens-Peer+Kuska+site:www.mathematica.ch&hl=en&fp=1&cad=b > > Jens-Peer was a brilliant Mathematica (and in general) programmer who > was able to code complicated algorithms efficiently and elegantly. His > reservoir of ideas what to implement, calculate, investigate, or > visualize was virtually unlimited. > > For the ones that were fortunate to know him in person and discuss > Mathematica, mathematics, physics, or image-processing issues with him, > know the value of his deep, critical, and constructive opinions and > contributions. > He loved to discuss so many different topics, ranging from Fullform[]s of > Mathematica graphics expressions to shape-characteristics of averaged > Wigner functions of quantum systems and the use of partial differential > equations to image processing tasks. > We all will miss such discussions with him in the future. > > Jens-Peer will be missed by the Mathematica community, his university > department > (http://www.izbi.uni-leipzig.de/englisch/izbi/mitarbeiter/kuska.php), > his former students, his friends, and of course, his family. > > Michael Trott > Wolfram Research >