Discussion journal of the Mössbauer Community

[Nagy Denes Lajos <nagy AT rmki.kfki.hu>]

In Memoriam Hendrik de Waard

It is with deepest sadness that the International Board on the Applications of 
the Mössbauer Effect (IBAME) announces the passing of its Honorary Member


                      Professor Hendrik de Waard


          University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands

                who died in Groningen on 11 August 2008.


Hendrik de Waard was born in Groningen on 20 April 1922. With an interruption 
of two years during World War II, he studied at the University of Groningen 
from 1940 to 1949 majoring in Physics and Mathematics. Except for short 
intermezzos in Stockholm/Uppsala (1954-1955), Urbana (1962-1963), Murray Hill 
(1972-1973) and San Luis Obispo (several times), he never left his home town 
and his Alma Mater.

His thesis work was devoted to nuclear spectroscopy on the radioactive isotopes 
181Hf and 193Os, which led to a doctorate in 1954. During his stay in Sweden, 
Hendrik became involved in investigating strongly deformed nuclei, and he was 
the first who demonstrated the existence of strong deformations in Lu isotopes, 
a phenomenon contradicting to the shell model.

He returned to the University of Groningen in 1955 where he became a Full 
Professor in Experimental Physics in 1958.

During his visiting professorship in Urbana in 1962-63, Hendrik engaged himself 
with Mössbauer effect. He was the initiator of Mössbauer experiments on several 
non-conventional isotopes including 129I, 129Xe, 83Kr and 67Zn. Since then, he 
has spent 40 years of his professional life focusing his attention on the 
Mössbauer effect.

In 1965, he started studying hyperfine interactions on radioactive nuclei that 
were introduced in solids by ion implantation, a program, which became his opus 
magnum. This lead to the discovery of impurity clusters containing two foreign 
elements in a metallic host ("molecules in metals") widely investigated later 
by Mössbauer spectroscopy and perturbed angular correlation. These studies 
turned out later to be decisive both for emission and for in-beam Mössbauer 
spectroscopy.

Hendrik officially retired in 1986 but, following his own words ("I'm retired 
but I won't quit!") he remained very active was even jumping into new fields 
for almost another two decades. During the late eighties, he became involved in 
studying magnetotactic bacteria and, in the late nineties, he was decisive part 
of a project on studying relaxation phenomena using nuclear resonant scattering 
of synchrotron radiation.

Hendrik de Waard, together with the late B.I. Deutch from the University of 
Aarhus was the founder of "Hyperfine Interactions" and remained one of the 
co-editors of the journal until his 80th birthday when he insisted that his 
name be finally removed from the journal cover.

Professor Hendrik de Waard has received numerous honours and recognitions, 
including Award of Membership into the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science, 
Fellowship to the American Physical Society, Steinmetz Medal of The Netherlands 
Society of "Volksuniversiteiten", and Honorary Membership to the European 
Physical Society.

The Mössbauer Community shall miss his personality, his original thoughts and 
the special flavour that he gave to conferences, which he attended. Our 
thoughts are with his wife Paula and with his family.


                             D.L. Nagy
                           Chair, IBAME