Mourning Hans Gutbrod
12.03.2025 |
GSI and FAIR mourn the loss of an excellent scientist and pioneer of relativistic heavy ion physics. Professor Dr. Hans Gutbrod passed away on March 3, 2025, at the age of 82 years.
After his dissertation under the supervision of Rudolf Bock in 1970 Hans Gutbrod continued his research on heavy ion physics at low energies in Heidelberg and Rochester.
Hans Gutbrod shaped the beginnings of the relativistic heavy ion physics at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He collaborated with Arthur Poskanzer and Hans-Georg Ritter to construct and build the GSI-LBL 4π-Detector „Plastic Ball“. They discovered the collective behavior of nuclear matter (called “flow”) which is still considered one of the most significant observations in relativistic heavy ion physics today. Together with Reinhard Stock he was awarded the Robert-Wichard-Pohl-Preis of the German Physical Society in 1988.
At the CERN accelerator SPS he continued his research efforts as spokesman of the WA80/90/93 experiments, which also became groundbreaking experiments of heavy ion physics. With Jürgen Schuhkraft and others he initiated the ALICE experiment at the LHC at CERN where he had very strong influence on the detector’s design and layout.
In 1995 Hans Gutbrod became director of the newly founded SUBATECH in Nantes (France), where he also took charge as the French spokesman of ALICE-FRANCE, as deputy spokesman of the ALICE Collaboration and as project leader of the ALICE Dimuon Spectrometer. He played a driving role in the development of the institute.
In 2001 he returned to GSI to work on the GSI Future Project, now known as FAIR. The next seven years he worked as leader of the “FAIR Joint Core Team”, organizing and working on the scientific scope of the project. His inspiring personality and imagination were invaluable to establish the project.
He was very active to communicate among scientists to foster broad cooperation in the FAIR project. He exploited for example his tight collaborations with Indian institutes vested at CERN to have them join FAIR.
He held an honorary professorship at the Physics Department of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and an honorary doctorate of the University of Lund (Sweden). Since 1992 he also was a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Hans Gutbrod will be remembered by GSI and FAIR as outstanding scientist, treasured colleague and, even more important, as a marvelous person. His enthusiasm and openness for new ideas will remain in our hearts. GSI and FAIR thank Hans Gutbrod for his contribution to our cause and bid him farewell with the greatest gratitude and respect. We extend our deepest sympathy to his family.
Management and Employees of the GSI and FAIR GmbH
