Laudatio for Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Syed M. Qaim

Abstract

Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Syed Muhammad Qaim was brought up in Pakistan. He obtained both his B.Sc. (1958) and M.Sc. (1961) from the Government College and Punjab University in Lahore, Pakistan. He received his Ph.D. in Nuclear Chemistry in 1964 from Liverpool University and D.Sc. in Applied Nuclear Science in 1977 from Birmingham University in England. He then received his Habilitation in Nuclear Chemistry in 1993 from Universitat zu Koln, Germany. Upon graduation with Ph.D., Dr. Qaim joined Birmingham University as a Research Associate (1964–66). He then served as a Senior Scientific Officer, Atomic Energy Centre in Lahore, Pakistan during 1966–68. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz, Germany (1968–70). Dr. Qaim then joined the Nuclear Research Centre, Julich, Germany in 1970. He spent the next 36 years at the Centre in various capacities such as a Scientist (1970–75), a Group Leader (1975–85), and a Division Leader (1985–2006) in the Institute of Nuclear Chemistry. He also served as an Acting Director (1995–96), and as the Vice-Director (1996–2006) of the Institute of Nuclear Chemistry. Additionally, since 1997 he has been a Professor of Nuclear Chemistry at Universitat zu Koln and is still teaching there. Since 2006, after his retirement, he is a Guest/Advisor at his old Institute of Nuclear Chemistry, Research Centre Julich. Furthermore, he holds a UNESCO-funded Research Professorship at the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in Trieste, Italy. Professor Qaim has very broad research interests in fundamental as well as applied aspects of nuclear chemistry, from Mossbauer spectroscopy, nuclear spectroscopy, nuclear reactions, and nuclear data to cyclotron-produced radionuclides. His fundamental work in Mossbauer spectroscopy dealt with Co incorporated in 32 different metal lattices via electrolytic deposition and high temperature diffusion. He was the first one to show that the linebroadening of the source in certain metals is caused by quadrupole splitting. The four pioneering papers published on this topic in the late sixties have become classic. His fundamental work in nuclear spectroscopy and nuclear reactions dealt with decay properties of nuclei. In the sixties Prof. Qaim discovered five new radionuclides, namely Nb, Mo, Mo, Xe and Pb, and characterized several others such as I, I, Cs, Np. In the seventies he concentrated on low-yield complex particle emission reactions, e.g. (n,t), (n,He), (n,Be) and (p,Be), which could only be studied via a combination of activation techniques with very precise radiochemical separations and low-level counting techniques as well as statistical model calculations based on the Hauser-Feshbach formalism. Prof. Qaim was awarded the Eotvos Lorand Medal of the Hungarian Physical Society in 1988 for his pioneering work in this field. In recent years, Prof. Qaim has become more interested in the fundamental aspects of the formation of isomeric Prepared by Professor Dr. A. Chatt (Halifax, Canada), Chairman of the Hevesy Medal Award Selection Panel 2008, President of the International Committee on Activation Analysis (ICAA). Narrated by Professor Dr. L. Wojnarovits (Budapest, Hungary), Co-Chairman of the 7th International Conference on Nuclear and Radiochemistry (NRC-7), Budapest, 2008. Hevesy Medal and Scroll presented by Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Tibor Braun (Budapest, Hungary), Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry.