Prof. Jiří Niederle passed away

On Sunday August 22, 2010 Prof. Jiří Niedele, a long-term member of the research staff of the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, passed away after a lengthy illness. It is a great loss for us, his colleagues, the Institute of Physics, as well as for the whole mathematical physics and particle physics community.

During his scientific career, J. Niederele focused his research on topics in mathematical physics and fundamental symmetries in particle physics, unification theories of particle interactions, conformal quantum field theory and gauge formulations of gravity. His significant contributions in mathematical physics include solution of problems in representation theory of Lie algebras and superalgebras and their corresponding groups and special functions, integrable non-linear systems and the theory of contractions and deformations. Professor Niederle was also a long-term pedagogue at Charles University and educated and trained a large number of students and young researchers.

The way Prof. Niederle influenced science notably exceeds his contributions to theoretical physics. After the collapse of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in November 1989, then the president of the Council for International Affairs of the Academy of Sciences took responsibility for a reconstruction and modernization of international co-operations of the Academy of Sciences. He held this position in 1990-1997 and again in 2001-2005. From this post, he significantly contributed to improving recognition of the Academy in the international science community. J. Niederle played the key and irreplaceable role in negotiating affiliation of our country to CERN in 1992. He had been a member of the CERN Council since 1992 and its vice-president in 1996-1998.

Jiří Niederle was a member of several scientific societies and associations. He was a founding member of the International Association of Mathematical Physics and for many years was an elected member of the council of the European Physical Society. He has been a member of the Czech branch of the Club of Rome since 1991 and was a founding member of the Euroscience Association.

The funeral took place at Strašnice Crematorium, Prague, on Thursday 2 September at 1 pm. He will be greatly missed, and our sympathies are with his family.