A sad post, Professor
Heinz Siegfried Wolff BSc. FIEE. FIBES FRCP (hon) FRSA passed away
Friday aged 89. He was the
world's first bio-engineer, director of the Division of Biological
Engineering at the National Institute for Medical Research and
Clinical Research Centre of the Medical Research Council. He founded
the Institute of Bio-engineering at Brunel University for over 30
years naming only a few of his accomplishments but perhaps he was better
known to us in Britain as the face of 'The
Great Egg Race' and he was
also a friend. I
grew up watching,
'The Great Egg Race'
'Young Scientists of the
Year' and 'Great
Experiments, Which Changed the World' and
as a result sparked
my interest in science,
partly because of the fun way he presented the subject matter
but mostly because
he was everything I wanted from a scientist, namely a German accent,
wild hair and bow tie. I had the pleasure of finally
meeting the professor back in 2009 when he was invited to speak at
Shrewsbury’s celebration of Darwin’s 200th anniversary where he
delivered a fascinating lecture about the evolution of photography
using only a box some tubing and a lens
he demonstrated the
photographic process taking a photograph of an audience member before
developing the photo using chemicals he mixed on stage rounding it
all off making a 48 pixel camera out of a box and some Ping-Pong
balls! After the lecture we chatted and stayed in contact ever since
and during that time he was the first to feature in my Science
Spotlight series (a series of portraits and biographical
information devoted to boffins that I painted) and he also took part
in my Operation Bath Duck project re-homing Scout Duck 002 of 100.
Always supportive of my work and kind with his time he wrote a very
kind testimonial for me about my work which I regard as one of the
highlights of my career.
I was thinking about
him just the other day as a Christmas card from Brunel was always one
of the highlights of Christmas for me, I saved each one and will look
through them again tonight, remembering the great man and what an
honour it was to know him.
© Arfon
Jones 2017. All images are copyrighted throughout the world.
Saw it on the news yesterday, such a shame. Did you get a Christmas card from him this year before he passed away?
ReplyDeleteI never received anything this year, but who can tell? I might post them all on here sometime Kid.
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