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Janusz Kaluzny (1955 – 2015)

 

 

Janusz obtained M.Sc. degree in Astronomy from Warsaw University in 1980 and begun his cereer under the guidance of Slavek Rucinski. Originally, his interest was focused on contact binaries of W UMa type which became the subject of his thesis defended in 1985. In 1986 and 1978 he was a postdoc at the Space Telescope Science Institute, where he familiarized himself with the newly introduced CCD photometry. He quickly mastered it and became one of the world-class specialists in this field. At STScI his interests had shifted to binaries in stellar clusters, on which nearly 100 per cent of his future scientific activity was to be concentrated. In early 90s, as an experienced photometrist, he partook in the launching of the OGLE project whose uncountable discoveries are one of the greatest achievements of Polish science in the last quarter of a century.

 

Within his own ob­ser­va­tio­nal pro­ject CASE, con­duc­ted in co­lla­bo­ra­tion with Car­ne­gie Ob­ser­va­to­ries, he ela­bo­ra­ted and imp­le­men­ted a me­thod of age and dis­tance de­ter­mi­na­tion for glo­bu­lar clus­ters based on ob­ser­va­tions of de­tached ec­li­psing bi­na­ries, ori­gi­nally pro­po­sed by Boh­dan Pa­czyn­ski. With his team he co­llec­ted a unique set of da­ta ena­bling the ve­ri­fi­ca­tion of the the­ory of stru­ctu­re and evo­lu­tion of Po­pu­la­tion II stars, and the de­ter­mi­na­tion of clus­ter mem­ber­ship from pro­per mot­ions. His most im­por­tant scien­ti­fic achiev­ement was the re­mo­val of a dis­cre­pan­cy between the cos­mo­lo­gi­cal age of the uni­verse and the age of the ol­dest glo­bu­lar clus­ters.

 

He pub­lished near­ly 300 pa­pers and su­per­vi­sed eight Ph.D. stu­dents. Poland was rep­re­sen­ted by him in the SALT Scien­ti­fic Wor­king Group. In 2007 he ob­tained a pres­ti­gious aw­ard „Mistrz” (Master) from the Foun­da­tion for Po­lish Scien­ce.

 

We lost a true Master, an un­eq­ualled ob­ser­ver, and a warm and good-hearted friend full of hu­mor. Such will be our me­mory of him.

 

 

 

 

personal remembrance by Alex Schwarzenberg-Czerny

 

 

 

 

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