Prof. Peter Weidelt: 27 February 1938 - 1 July, 2009

From: Andreas Hoerdt a.hoerdt@tu-braunschweig.de
Subject: Peter Weidelt
Date: 3 July 2009

Dear colleagues,

We have some extremely sad news. Peter Weidelt died from a heart attack during a visit to Turkey on Wednesday this week.

As you know, Peter Weidelt was still very active. Many of us just met him last weekend during the workshop in memoriam of Prof. Schmucker, where he gave an excellent presentation and was as sharp as ever. He had ongoing scientific projects, was working on a book chapter and travelled around the world. His death came completely unexpected and leaves us in deep sorrow.

Andreas Hördt, Karl-Heinz Glaßmeier, Jürgen Blum

P.S.: Details on his funeral will be available next week on our homepage: www.igep.tu-bs.de


Photographs of Peter

EM Workshop photographs with Peter in them:

Other photographs of Peter:


Communication from Peter's wife and children

Dear colleagues of my husband and our father Peter Weidelt,

We are overwhelmed!

So many kind words, words of recognition, appreciation and highest regard as well as thanks for my husband and our father - words of deepest sympathy from the bottom of the heart

Letters and E-mails, in which you allow me to participate in your memories and your experiences with my husband, and which I appreciate especially

Very often your readiness to support us

Your participation in the funeral -- coming from far away -- and your participation in the subsequent gathering and some mementos there on my husband

Your sympathy, best wishes, and thoughts

And your donations to the Welthungerhilfe

These all are to us very important words of comfort and confidence that we will not be left alone.

We say to all of you THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Heidi Weidelt with Jan and Anne
11 August, 2009


Comments/reminiscences from Peter's colleagues and friends

Dick Bailey

This is truly an unexpected and very sad loss. I and many people will miss Peter's extremely insightful approach to our field, but just as important, his generous and patient friendship to all. Before I met Peter many years ago, he and I were working at the same time on completely different approaches to the geomagnetic inverse problem. When I met him shortly after, it was a delight to discover in him a warm colleague, not a competitor. I always particularly looked forward to meeting Peter again at the few EM meetings I have been able to attend recently, and it is very sad to realize that he will no longer be with us.

John Booker

I am absolutely in shock over this news! Peter was a good friend and always had something useful to say to me whenever we met. I did see him at Neustadt and he was his normal self if a bit older as we all are.

Vikas Baranwal

I just could not believe news of Dr. Weidelt's passing away. I met him first time in EMTF workshop in Hildesheim. He was always clearing my silly doubts in Geophysics. He was such a down to earth personality that I never hesitated to ask him any basic question in EM and I always got answer in full respect. Whenever I was thinking of going in any conference then somewhere in a corner, I was feeling happy that I would get a chance to meet Peter again. I know that I will not see him again in any conference but he is still alive in my heart as young and enthusiastic as I had seen him first time. We have lost a great teacher, a great scientist but on top of all, a very humble and true person.

We all pray for peace of his soul and his blessings to us to be a good human like him.

Niels Christensen

For some reason, this was the image coming to mind after the first emotional reactions to the news about Peter: Three years ago the geophysics section of our department moved from the former factory buildings in which we had been for a long (too long) time into buildings at the university campus. The buildings were the former art museum in Aarhus, now free because of the new museum. The place was beautifully remodeled and we were all very pleased with our new premises. However, it turned out that rainwater was infiltrating a corner of the building and drains had to be put in to avoid the erosion of the foundations. Very important not to lose the corner stones.

In the fall of 1974, Peter started teaching EM at the geophysics section of the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Aarhus, in Denmark. Not that the subject had not been taught before, but with Peter's arrival the level went up a few notches - quite a few, actually. Peter came to Aarhus every week and gave his lectures and he also wrote lecture notes on the intricacies of TM and TE modes, on Schelkunoff potentials, boundary conditions, analytical properties, and what not. The course immediately became cult and it retained that status also in the following years when Laust Børsting Pedersen taught the course and continued upholding the level using Peters lecture notes. I started my studies in geophysics in 1975 and therefore just missed Peter's teaching, but the lecture notes have traveled with me all over the world as my EM bible, and since then I have had many opportunities to be with Peter and to listen to his lecturing.

During the years following Peter's visit, quite a few of us continued our activities in the field of electromagnetism which in Aarhus flourished most profusely in the field of near-surface geophysics for environmental purposes. Over the years, we have built a strong EM group of professors, PhD students, postdocs and international visitors, numbering about 15 people. It has become one of the largest EM groups in the world, developing instruments, field procedures, data processing and inversion programs for controlled source EM, and has been instrumental in the national groundwater mapping program now being conducted in Denmark. We are happy and proud of our achievements - when we have time to think about it - but, like everyone else, we rarely look over our shoulder to see how we got here. Now, with the news that Peter has left us, those of us who knew him look back, and we see the cornerstone in our foundation without which we would not have become who we became.

We had many opportunities to see Peter over the years; for a number of years we were diligent participants in the seminars in Neustadt am Weinstrasse. Personally, my last contact with him was a question I sent him some years back. I have been working on the role of apparent conductivity as a computational shortcut in the modeling of transient electromagnetic responses and was stuck with a question and not a lot of clues. Peter responded very quickly and said that would have to consider that in more detail. A month later he sent me his ideas involving Widder's formula for inverse Laplace transformation from 1946. All of it very Peter! He gave his time and effort and he managed to come up with an interesting proposition using his impressive backlog of knowledge. Who else would cite a book from 1946? Over the past year, I have entertained the thought of visiting Peter; I just wanted to get one step further with my research before going. And now it is too late.

In 1976, Kurt Sørensen, Hans Kurt Johansen and I were in Sopron for the EM induction workshop. One day we went on a day trip to Budapest with Peter. We looked at the then 20 year old still-existing bullet holes in the walls of Budapest, talked this and that and nothing, and on the way back to Sopron we parked the car at the side of the road lined with cherry trees. Peter was the first one up the trees and in a very short time we picked two huge bagfuls of the best cherries I have ever tasted. Before we reached Sopron again we were all moaning with rumbling bellies.

I miss Peter.

Alan Jones

For myself, I have one personal anecdote and one very amusing anecdote that spring to mind whenever I think of Peter.

When I wrote the "Parkinson's pointers' potential perfidy!" (http://homepages.dias.ie/~ajones/papers/25.pdf) paper in late-1985, I submitted it to GJI and Peter was the Associate Editor for it. The original title was "Parkinson's pointers' perfidy!". It got through review, but the Associate Editor, as in Peter, requested a change of title, so I changed the title to what was published. Some months later I met Peter, and he said to me "I told you to change the title, but you made it WORSE!", and playfully smacked me around the head then giggled to show he appreciated the fun.

The smallest of our Induction Workshops in terms of numbers was the 1984 Ile-Ife one (http://www.dias.ie/mtnet/workshops/1984_Ile-Ife/ile-ife_photo.jpg). Some 30 intrepid international scientists made it, of which of course Peter was one. Peter arrived some days ahead of the meeting, and decided to travel alone into northern Nigeria, which was a little unsafe at the time. There he was arrested on a Friday afternoon and suspected of being a mercenary (!!!). Of course he'd left his passport in Ile-Ilfe, so couldn't prove his identity, and was thrown in gaol while they tried to establish just who they had arrested. On Monday afternoon the police finally got through to - I think - Remi Alabi in Ile-Ife, who spluttered down the phone "You have Professor Peter Weidelt in gaol as a mercenary...??? Let him go immediately!!! He is an honoured guest!!!". But by that time it was late in the day, and Peter decided rather than hunt for a hotel room to spend another night in the cell as he'd got to know his other cell mates over the previous two nights and wanted to have another night with them...

We have lost two of our leading lights in a very short space of time. Two kind and gentle men who exemplified the very best of scientific enquiry and of a scientific life well lived. Two men who made our field the warm and welcoming and inviting field that it is. Certainly Ulrich and Peter had a lot to do with me being content to stay in EM induction for the last 35 years. As their lasting legacy to us, let us all try to learn from them and emulate their example.

Ted Lilley

The sudden loss of Peter Weidelt, a revered leader in our subject, will leave many looking back with gratitude to their contact with him over the years. At various meetings around the world (since the 1974 Ottawa Workshop in my case) many have greatly benefitted from his gentle, patient, expert and humorous discussion of a wide range of points. He has left us with his fundamental contributions to EM, the memories of the warmth of his personality, and the benefits of many discussions over those years. The photo on MTNet of Peter taken at Cabo Frio is wonderful portrait, and captures him exactly.

Nick Palshin

We are deeply struck by the sad news about Peter Weidelt death. That is a heavy blow not only to the German scientists but also to the whole international community. He really was one of the best of our community, not only as an outstanding scientist, but also as person, who was always helpful, kind-hearted,, compassionate, good-willing., optimistic, devoted to his work, family and friends. It was an honor to work with him, a great joy to communicate with him, and it is a great grief to part with him. We shall always remember our Peter.

Toshi Uchida

This is really a sudden sad news. We have lost another big star from Germany in our EM community. I first met Peter at MT-DIW1 and 11th Induction Workshop in Wellington. At MT-DIW1, I presented an immature 2D inversion result of COPROD2 data, because my slow code was running at three-and-half iteration on a SUN Sparc 1, when I left Japan to New Zealand. Since then, when I met Peter at workshops, he always called me Mr. three-and-half-iteration man. I was happy with it because he is Peter Weidelt. He was the honest scientist by himself and for other people. He was always kind to younger scientists and gave constructive questions and comments enthusiastically. I sincerely thank him for his longtime research achievements and pray for the repose of his soul.

Elena Zhdanov

How many have been lost in the abyss that waits for us ahead.?

Two weeks after the fact I have learned of the passing of someone who wasn't my friend, was not my colleague, wasn't even my distant acquaintance, but who will be none-the-less warmly remembered and sorely missed. A man who used to play with me when I was very small, who used to bring me awesome life-like stuffed animals (which I still have and cherish), a man who used to play "tiger" with me, growling and chasing me under the kitchen table.

This post is to mourn the sudden and unnecessary death of a man who had talent and perseverance, who had a passion for life and all that it brings, a man of amazing kindness and compassion and strength - German geophysicist and meteorologist Dr. Peter Weidelt.

Dr. Rosemary Hutton was the first one we lost, then - very recently - Dr. Ulrich Schmucker, and now Peter is also gone.

I grew up around all these people.

A whole generation of outstanding scientists is passing us by and this saddens me more than I can express.

Elena Zhdanov