Discussion journal of the Mössbauer Community

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

                     In Memoriam Rudolf L. Mößbauer

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

                       Professor Rudolf L. Mößbauer

              Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

                       who died on 14 September 2011.


Rudolf Mößbauer was born in Munich. He graduated from the Technical 
University of Munich (TUM) in 1955 and prepared his PhD thesis in 1957-58 
at the same university under the auspices of Heinz Maier-Leibnitz the 
latter work has been performed in Heidelberg, at the Max Planck Institute 
for Medical Research, though.

In his PhD work, he described and explained the recoilless nuclear 
fluorescence of gamma rays in 191Ir, i.e. the Mössbauer effect. For this 
discovery, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1961.

In 1960, Rudolf Mössbauer was invited to Caltech where he became a full 
professor in 1962. In 1964, he returned to TUM Munich where he was a full 
professor until 1997 when he became professor emeritus. From 1972 to 1977 
he was the director of the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, 
France and played an important role in introducing the user regime at the 
ILL high-flux reactor.

Although, since the mid-seventies, Mößbauer's interest has gradually 
shifted towards neutrino physics, he has never lost either scientific or 
personal contact to the Mössbauer effect and the international Mössbauer 
community, respectively. Even in the nineties he published papers on 
nuclear diffraction of Mössbauer radiation. He was a distinguished speaker 
of many Mössbauer conferences the last ICAME conferences with his 
participation being 1999 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany and 2003 in 
Muscat, Oman.

Rudolf Mößbauer's role in Mössbauer spectroscopy, both with the discovery 
of the Mössbauer effect and also with his continuing interest, can hardly 
be overstated. The Mössbauer Community thanked him for his unsurpassable 
services by having elected him the first Honorary Member of IBAME.

We shall miss him. Our thoughts are with his family. The funeral services 
took place on Tuesday, 20 September 2011.

                                        D.L. Nagy
                                       Chair, IBAME