Eugen Preuss

Eugen Preuss, born 17 November 1937, studied physics at the Technische Hochschule in Aachen. He received his doctorate in physics in 1970, with a dissertation on a topic in theoretical plasma physics. In the same year he joined the scientific division of the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie in Bonn, Germany, where he worked for over 32 years. He was among the MPIfR scientists who, beginning in 1973, established the Very Long Baseline Interferometry method with the new Effelsberg telescope. After 1975, they collaborated with other VLBI groups in Europe, eventually leading to the European VLBI Network. Later, and until his retirement in 2002, he was especially interested in the possibilities for VLBI with antennas in space and contributed to the QUASAT and RadioAstron projects, the latter still being in operation today. See his account "The Beginnings of VLBI at the 100-m Radio telescope".

Eugen was the staff-elected member of the Chemistry-Physics-Technology Section of the Max-Planck-Society from 1979-82 and again 1991-94. He was also from 1979-92 Chair of the Division on Astronomy and Astrophysics of the European Physical Society, from which the European Astronomical Society was founded in 1988. Over many years Eugen managed the MPIfR's colloquium series with great panache, and in doing so he helped form world-wide scientific contacts and also awareness at the Institute of the important current trends in astronomy and related physics. We will remember him as one of the early protagonists of VLBI at the MPIfR, and many of us will also vividly remember from personal conversations his broad knowledge of the basics and current trends in physics and his wide-reaching interests in music and the arts.

Dr. Eugen Preuss passed away on 25 December 2017. He was 80 years old.