Obituary: Alfred Leo Maria Fettweis (1926–2015)

Abstract

Alfred Fettweis, a giant in the fields “circuits and systems” and “multidimensional systems theory”, passed away on August 20, 2015 in Bochum, Germany. Our community has lost a pioneer in the field who always had been closely connected to our journal “Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing”, for which he served as a founding board member from 1990 to 1993. It is only a sad coincidence that the sequence of his many personal contributions to MSSP will end with a joint paper together with one of us in this issue. Alfred Fettweis had close scientific cooperation and many exchange of ideas with Nirmal K. Bose, the founding editor of this journal, and his advice with respect to the evolution of MSSP had been always appreciated. Born on November 27, 1926 in Eupen, Belgium, Alfred Fettweis received the degrees of Ingenieur Civil Electricien and Docteur en Sciences Appliquees from Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, in 1951 and 1963, respectively. During the time between 1951 and 1963 he was employed as an engineer at the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT) in Belgium and in the USA (1954–1956)—an experience from which he accrued valuable practical skill and experience. This phase of his professional life in an industrial environment strongly influenced his later career as a scientist. He always emphasized that scientific results, including even theoretical ones, should have a practical impact.