Jens-Peer Kuska passed away
mtr...@wolfram.com
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.
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
peter
much from his postings. Thanks for letting us know.
Peter
2009/7/7 <mtr...@wolfram.com>:
> 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=OYlIrx8AAACUxZjYdkFuXR=
kVM5CWP0nj1ZkYyRt9DFmqLZPJWZ3WHA
>
> 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=e=
n&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 differentia=
l
> 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
>
--
Peter Lindsay
E. Martin-Serrano
I express my most sincere condolence to his family, his closest friends, and
the whole group.
I can't believe it. He was posting here just the day before yesterday.
E. Martin-Serrano
Kevin J. McCann
Kevin
Peltio
> Dear Mathgroup,
>
> I am sorry to inform you that Jens-Peer Kuska passed away last week.
> He was 45 years old.
I am so sorry to hear that.
He had a personal and distintive touch in the way he answered to
posters in this group. Brief, always to the point and with a
characteristic sense of humour. We will all miss his wit and his
elegant and efficient coding.
I did not have the privilege to know him in the real life, but even
through the almost always distorting lens of this virtual medium I
could sense that at the other end of the cable there was an exceptional
person.
My thoughts go to the family whose sorrow must be immense.
Peltio
Andrzej Kozlowski
the same again.
I would like to add just a few words from myself.
I have known Jens-Peer through the MathGroup since I started to
participate in in in 1998. At that time I was a newbie and he one of
the most active and most knowledgeable contributors. There seemed to
be no area of computer science, physics or other science Jens-Peer did
not know about. He was a brilliant C programmer, and expert in many
other computer languages but it was clear (and he often stated it)
that he loved Mathematica above all others. This made him sometimes
impatient with people who criticized without understanding it, but
even when he seemed to be annoyed he always gave practical and useful
advice.
Around the 2001 I started teaching geometry of polyhedra at the
university (in Japan) where I worked as a professor. I wanted to use a
3D viewer but found RealTime3D - (and Open GL based hack used by
Mathematica before version 6 as a stop-gap measure) unsatisfactory.
However, I remembered that I had seen a MathGroup post by Russel Towle
in which he praised MathGL 3d - an Open GL and MathLink based program
as being ideal for the purpose I had in mind.
Unfortunately MathGl 3d at that time did not run on Macs. I wrote to
Jens-Peer asking him about a Mac version and he replied that he had no
access to Macs but WRI was going to send him an i-Mac and he would let
me know when a Mac version becomes available.
So, while waiting for that, I run MathGl3d slowly under emulation on
my Mac and while my students used much faster Windows version. It
would take a long time to describe how impressive this program was at
that time. It's enough to say that many of its capabilities are still
unmatched by Mathematica in version 7. In particular, what I found
particularly useful was the superb function MVContourPlot3D, which is
still much faster and more accurate than ContourPlot3D in Mathematica
7. In any many of my students became quite expert at using this
program and one even detailed wrote a (Japanese language) manual as
part of her graduation thesis.
I met Jens-Peer personally just once, during the IMS at Imperial
College London in 2003. He gave a fascinating talk on medical image
processing and after that I had a chance to exchange a few words with
him. The memory of his wit and intelligence remains with me to this
day. I reminded him about this promised Mac version of Math GL 3d, and
he told me that he was having more problems than he had expected due
to bugs in Apple's implementation of Open GL.
Two more years past and assumed that Jens-Peer had forgotten all about
this. But then in 2005 unexpectedly I got an e-mail from him with a
link from which I was able to download a working version for Mac OS X.
I was very pleased and immediately started using it in my lectures (by
that time at a different university and on a different topic). Soon
after that an announcement from WRI appeared in the MathGroup to the
effect that MathGL3d was now a commercial (and not very cheap) package
sold by Wolfram Research. In effect I got a fairy expensive present,
which I would never had asked for if I had known about it.
In fact this was very typical of Jens-Peer - he helped people in such
a unpretentious and undemanding way that one often did not appreciate
that there was a cost in it for him.
Jens-Peer was, by the way, a research professor at the University of
Lepipzig, one of the oldest universities in Europe located in the city
of Johann Sebastian Bach. His manner was, however, so direct and
unpretentious that probably only a few of the many MathGroup users
whose questions he answered ever realized it.
Andrzej Kozlowski
On 7 Jul 2009, at 18:05, mtr...@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.
>
>
> 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
Leonid Shifrin
I am rather new to the group, but was totally shocked. Jens - Peer's
presence and influence on the group seemed to me as something
unquestionable, I felt like he always was there and always will be.
My sincerest condolence to all those close to Jens - Peer, everybody who
knew him, and all of the group as well. Life often isn't fair, but not so
often to such extent.
Leonid
> 2009/7/7 <mtr...@wolfram.com>:
> > 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=OYlIrx8AAACUxZjYdkFuXR=
> kVM5CWP0nj1ZkYyRt9DFmqLZPJWZ3WHA
> >
> > 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=e=
> n&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 differentia=
> l
> > 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
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Peter Lindsay
>
>
Gopinath Venkatesan
Sincerely,
Gopinath Venkatesan
Student
University of Oklahoma
Syd Geraghty
I am deeply saddened by the news that Jens-Peer Kuska has died at such
a young age.
As only regular readers of Mathgroup postings over the years can fully
appreciate his contributions were both prolific and extraordinarily
useful.
His insight and knowledge of Mathematica and Mathematics has been (and
will remain in the archives) an invaluable resource to new Mathematica
users.
His generous commitment of time and intellect to help others in this
group is greatly appreciated.
My condolences to his family and friends.
Syd
Syd Geraghty B.Sc, M.Sc.
Mathematica 7.0.1 for Mac OS X x86 (64 - bit) (18th February 2009)
MacOS X V 10.5.6
MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2GB RAM
Raffy
wrote:
> All,
>
> I express my most sincere condolence to his family, his closest friends, =
and
> the whole group.
>
> I can't believe it. He was posting here just the day before yesterday.
>
> E. Martin-Serrano
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mtr...@wolfram.com [mailto:mtr...@wolfram.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2009 10:05 AM
> Subject: Jens-Peer Kuska passed away
>
>
> I am sorry to inform you that Jens-Peer Kuska passed away last week.
> He was 45 years old.
I also would like to extend my condolence. Jens-Peer was an excellent
resource and contributed greatly to this group.
Sjoerd C. de Vries
shocking and rather unexpected news.
If there would be one constant factor in life, it would be Jens-Peer's
presence here. I'll miss his typical reply template:
"... and <ingenious solution> doesn't work ??"
My condoleances and thoughts go to his family and friends.
Sjoerd
On Jul 7, 11:03 am, mtr...@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=OYlIrx8AAACUxZjYdkFu..=
.
>
> 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=e=
...
Thomas Dowling
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, <mtr...@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.
>
>
>
> 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
ibmi...@hotmail.com
Mathematica plays an important role. Kuska's name, among others
regulars here, did come across my mind when I think about
Acknowledgement. He was always among the first who helped.
Jens-Peer will be sorely missed.
Regards,
Michuco
Rolf....@gmail.com
Jens-Peer death is a big loss, unimaginable for his family, hard to
realize for his friends and colleauges. He was a clear person.
Unpretending in his outer appearence (I saw him only once with a tie,
when we were asking project-money from some state investment bank, and
he immediately took it off when we were finished), but always with a
sharp intellect and great humor. I met him first in 1996 in Berlin,
while touring Germany together with Michael Trott in the MathMobile.
Since then we met often, mostly professionally, but also privately. We
taught Mathematica together, wrote proposals
for the european commision, met at conferences and workshops and he
also helped me once with a difficult economic consulting project for
the Office of Fair Trade. I always enjoyed meeting, working and
talking with him.
Maybe it is not too personal to mention in this group that I was most
impressed by the way he interacted with his son. So I hope he will
cope as well as possible with this hard loss. He truly can be proud of
his father. I am glad I knew Jens-Peer and I will always remember his
very special way of being.
Rolf Mertig
GluonVision GmbH, Berlin, Germany
Frank Murray
He will be missed.
fjm
fizzy
with unique style, etc. it was him........ I always checked his
Mathgroup contribution to see what I could learn from him....not only
for his Mathematica insight but to find out how he was going to tease us
that day.....A man of Intelligence and Wit....not a bad combination....
Jens......Thank You
Jerry Blimbaum
Ossama Kullie
I think it was a shock for all the people who knew him, I met him
several time during mathematica meetings, he is very thoughtful,
helpful and friendly person. I think we all will miss him, a very
kindly person!.
O. Kullie
David Reiss
I checked my email archives and see that I have been corresponding
with Jens for well over a decade. In every note a friendly and
appreciative manner. It is a pleasure to reread them, especially
those where he corrects mistakes of mine. My warm condolences go out
to his family and personal friends.
--David
romeny
> 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.
>
,
> helpful, stimulating contributions to Mathgroup, where he contributed so
> many times for more than 10 years.
>
.
>
> And the German-speaking Mathematica user knew him additionally from his
> many contribution to the German Mathematica user group:
>
...
>
> 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
l
> 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
My sincere condolences for his family, friends and the entire
Mathematica community.
I met Jens-Peer several times, at Mathematica meetings and a dedicated
workshop at a radiology conference in Vienna, lastly at the IMS in
Maastricht, which we (Markus van Almsick) and I organized. It was
always very inspiring to see his critical and constructive view during
the discussions. We are colleagues in the field of medical image
analysis. He was a pioneer to use Mathematica for it, visualize CT
datasets, perform PDE based methods, and he developed and implemented
a very elegant image registration method.
He was unconventional, actually was not bothered by conventions, and
always took a real physicist approach to the problems passing by.
He has always been a theoretical physicist, a wonderful background
which was shining through all his answers to the community questions.
I know him as a very kind, enthousiastic, deeply serious person, with
a dedicatedness to help, and then solve things generically, and as
elegant as possible.
A community always floats on the enthousiam and work of about 10% of
very active members. Jens-Peer was such a pillar.
We will miss him dearly. Strength to his family in these days.
Bart ter Haar Romeny
Eindhoven University of Technology
Biomedical Image Analysis
Hannes
expert and a great scientist.
I feel with his family and friends.
On 7 Jul., 11:03, mtr...@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=OYlIrx8AAACUxZjYdkFu.. .
>
> 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=e ...
>
> 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
gudi
> Dear Mathgroup,
> I am sorry to inform you that Jens-Peer Kuska passed away last week.
Many newcomers to Mathematica were guided, benefited and enjoyed Jens'
posts while learning from it. I join the Mathematica community in him
paying tributes.
Narasimham G.L.
ISRO Engineer/Scientist