In Memory of Jaroslav Zemánek (1946 - 2017)

--- Pei Yuan Wu (September 19. 2017)

Only after reading the September 9, 2017 issue of “Headlines & Deadlines”, the newsletter for members of the American Mathematical Society, did I realize that an old acquaintance of mine, Jaroslave Zemánek, had passed away on February 18 this year at the age of 70.

As a Czech, Jaroslave Zemánek (1946 - 2017) obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1977 at the “Institute of Mathematics” of the “Polish Academy of Sciences” in Warsaw under the guidance of Wieslaw Żelazko, and afterwards spent all his career, a total of 35 years, there.

 Come to think of it, over the past quarter of a century, we have met each other in person only three or four times. The first time is in the Spring of 1992 although before that we certainly knew each other by name as our research interests, functional analysis in general and operator theory in particular, overlapped quite a bit. In 1992, he was to organize the three-month long 39th semester from March to May at the “Stephan Banach International Mathematical Center” in Warsaw, which was to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Stephan Banach (1892 - 1945) and the 60th anniversary of the publication of the French translation of his book “Théorie des Opérations Linéaires”. Over 200 mathematicians from 33 countries took part in the semester activities. People can imagine what such a huge program entails in terms of the adminstrative responsibilities on the part of the organizer.  Zemánek had been able to carry out his duties efficiently and smoothly.

We met for the first time on March 30 at the Warsaw airport after my 2o-hour flight from Taipei via Bangkok and Amsterdam. Starting from the next day, he was busily arranging the lectures for the program. Accommodated in the guest house of “Banach Center”, I stayed for 11 days altogether, in Warsaw most of the time other than a two-day excursion to Kraków. This turned out to be in a period of fewer attendees so that I was asked to give four one-hour lectures to fill up the time slots.  During this period, I encountered Zemánek constantly in the lecture room, on the hallway, or in the library. He impressed me as a very organized person, attending to all the details and always formally attired, probably in a typical Eastern European style. This can also be seen from his published survey papers, which always contain tons of previous references pertaining to the topics discussed. At his invitation, I also contributed a survey article “Additive combinations of special operators” to the proceedings of the semester “Functional Analysis and Operator Theory” (Banach Center Publ., Vol. 30, Polish Acad. Sci. Inst. Math., Warsaw, 1994, pp. 337 - 361) edited by him. My first contact with him was all pleasant.

In later years, we saw each other only occasionally: once in April, 1993 during the “Journees de Theorie des Operateurs” at “Centre International de Rencontres Mathematique” (CIRM) in Luminy, France, and afterwards even sharing a room in Hotel Fimotel in Marseille for one night before our embarking separately on the trips to Johannesburg, South Africa and Prague, Czech. Another occasion is when we were both in Berlin for the “International Congress of Mathematicians” in August, 1998.  In this huge gathering, it happened that we both booked the “Footloose Tour” organized by the conference to visit the tombs of the mathematicians L. Kronecker and K. Weierstrass on August 25. Both are household names among mathematicians.  It was beside the tomb of the latter in the cemetery of the parish of “St. Hedwigs Cathedral” close to East Berlin that we took a photo together, which is displayed in this blog head.

 

Many years have passed since then. The demises of people of my own generation always remind me of the early naive and innocent days. My memories of Zemánek will remain with me for many years to come. May he rest in peace!