In memory of Karl

Contribution by Christian Huck

Meeting with Karl was an experience, from a personal and scientific point of view.

The first time I met Karl was in 2001, Kyongju, South Korea, and I was deeply impressed by his sensitivity in identifying young rising stars at an extremely early time point of their career.

In the following years I had the chance to meet Karl at IDRC and discuss with him about several of our ongoing research projects. I was wondering about his patience in listening to my questions and when I asked about his opinion, he knew how to motivate by saying something like “You should do what you want to and how you feel. Then you will know what it means.” This was one of the main motivation to continue with our research on nanomaterials, investigating pore diameters being in the Angstrom range. Discussing about Babinet´s theorem he recommended to continue with the experiments.

Repeating similar discussions I always had the feeling like coming back home again, being back at the basis. Indeed, Karl always had an open ear for any novel attempts and surprised me with his permanent youthful enthusiasm. So I am very grateful that I could have received my take-home message and I like to "live the spirit".

Finally, there are only a few words left to say to Karl:

Thank you, your spirit will always be with us, rest in peace.

Yours sincerely, Christian Huck