Tribute to Professor J. A. Kong
by Prof. Alain Priou,
Chairman of The Electromagnetic Academy in French, in Memorial Service of
PIERS2008 Hangzhou, March 26, 2008
Ladies, Gentlement, Dear Colleagues:
Professor J.A. Kong, one of the world's specialist in electromagnetic, is
an exceptional outstanding person having a vision for electromagnetic education
and researches. He was ready to do new and impressive works. It will be with
a great emotion and a great respect to him, I will do this Memoriam Speech.
It is very difficult to sum up very quickly, the career J.A. Kong, which is
entirely devoted to science both by the training who offered at MIT and at
Zhejiang University and others universities and through research programs
he has been able to promote and develop all across World. His life was so
rich and so abundant.
I would like to recall our first meeting in 1987. I was senior engineer at
National Office of Aerospace Research Center in France. I have a contract
with the French General Directorate of Armament to make progress in the modeling
of composite materials in electromagnetic. I have prepared a proposal and
send it to Professor Kong in MIT as well as to other very good universities
in United States. Very rapidly, Professor Kong send me a reply and offer to
me to become a "Visiting Scientist" in his laboratory and to use
the modeling software developed in MIT to simulate remote sensing media such
as snow and ground
My first arrival in September 1987, was marked with fears of having to live
for one year in an unknown world, having to adapt to a different lifestyle
and the need for me to integrate a research team of great renown. I have appreciated
the human qualities of Professor Kong, which immediately put me at ease by
giving "white card" to organize my work and told me that his door
would be, always, open for scientific or technical discussions and in case
of problems. He asked a Swiss student to help me for searching a flat and
for administrative procedures.
At this moment, the research group consisted about 40 members, a ten for the
staff, was an international staff with Chinese, Egyptian, Finish and French
scientists, members of Air Force and Lincoln Lab and about 30 students, half
of whom American and the other half of Chinese either born in United States
or native from China. We had working meetings on Tuesday and Thursday nights
where students presented their research activities of the week or previous
days for the entire staff. Let me remember the weeks before congress where
all students with accepted papers repeated their presentation to perfection
and full satisfaction of the members of the staff.
During these work meetings Professor Kong have raised the issue of revaluation
of teaching and research in electromagnetic. During these "brain storming"
meetings driven J.A. Kong we planned to put in place several mechanisms of
action, representing the betting whose success were not guaranteed in 1987:
- The first focused on the creation of a symposium, which would be open to
everyone, professors, teachers and master or PhD students. The main idea and
the principle of J.A.Kong are that all researchers should be equal and that
discrimination of belonging to small groups or small teams should not prevent
these researchers to present their work under their own name. Thus was born
the Symposium Progress in Electromagnetic Research Symposium. At the beginning
of this symposium, it was decided to hold every two years, and then very fast,
it was held twice a year in various countries. In 1998, we hosted the symposium
PIERS in Nantes, France which I was the General Director (1250 papers and
around 1000 participants). You know now it was a very strong idea for making
easier the exchange between scientists and young students
- The second action was to create a Journal: JEMWA or Journal of Electromagnetic
Waves Applications, journal opens for free to anyone except that the presented
papers should be reviewed by an international expert group. Everyone was free
to propose specific subjects. I participated as a guest editor for two special
issues on composite materials and electromagnetic measuring techniques (1992)
and on the bianisotropic and biisotropic media( 1995). Each of the papers
presented by different authors were reviewed by a panel of 5 European and
international experts and then, to be reviewed by the staff of CETA/MIT. The
Journal is published every quarter a year and more depending on good proposals.
The papers are available on the web with a pre-registration of small amounts.
- The third action relates to the creation of books. J.A.Kong was haunted
by the disappearance of collections of MIT books in electromagnetic. In 1988,
He suggested very early, to resume this collection and to set up a process
with invited editors by fields to re-start this collection. He gave the name
of Progress in Electromagnetic Research collection (PIER). In 2003, with the
Professor T. Itoh of UCLA, we have prepared a special issue on the applications
of electromagnetic materials and of Photonic Band Gap materials. This issue
was published by EWT in January 2004, a book accessible through the web. The
books of PIER appear at least twice a year.
- The final action proposed by J.A.Kong was to create world Academies of electromagnetic.
The first was set up in Boston. It assumed the PIER Symposium, the JEWA journal,
the PIER structure and the realization of the Who's Whos in electromagnetic.
This databank, which was requested by J.A.Kong was needed to satisfy the idea
to « connecting people to people », who he had repeatedly suggested. A French
Academy of Electromagnetic was created in 1994 for organizing and supporting
PIERS 1998.
In 2003, J.A.Kong founded the Electromagnetic Academy of the University of
Zhejiang in China. This academy is aimed at teaching, research on every aspect
of electromagnetic from theory to new emerging applications. This Academy
is dedicated to the development and training of new generations of scientists
and engineers in electromagnetic and the establishment of multidisciplinary
interactions and collaborations between scientists in the field worldwide.
It drew an international participation of scientists with worldwide reputations
which has allowed to establish a panel of professors associated with a high
value. J.A.Kong creates, also, a research group in the Electromagnetic Academy
of the University, Research group that comes to shine very recently by publishing
papers on experimental meta-materials, the papers are noticed and authoritative.
J. A. Kong was giving rise to the setting up of national Chinese research
programs in simulation and experimentation of metamaterials.
Since 1989 as Editor-in-Chief of PIER Series, JEMWA Journal, he was issued
more than 50 000 pages of international journals, book chapters and papers
conferences or invited seminars and led over 200 issues of the JEMWA journal
( an issue a month). In nearly 20 years, 51 books in the collection PIER are
published on the web.
J.A. Kong has successfully made the terrible gamble in 1987-1988 to the development
of electromagnetic and applications available to all scientists worldwide
while preserving the high quality of scientific works published. He has been
able to develop exchanges between countries and researchers. He has been able
to promote the equality of all in research. If I would copy its students of
1987, I would say he is "King" Kong. He was one of our "Pairs"
or "PEER" person. Our university was very honoured to receive him
and give him the prestigious title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University
of Paris 10 in October 2006. I was personally very pleased that J. A. Kong
was the first holder of that distinction in Physics of the multidisciplinary
Paris 10 University. He received, also, the Doctor Honoris Causa degree of
the University of Nantes in 2006, presented by Professor Joseph Saillard.
20 years after, all the idea proposed by J.A.Kong was a complete success.
It contributes, strongly, to the development of teaching and research in electromagnetic
in the world. It is this vision that will miss us now. We have lost a visionary
and an outstanding scientist, we have lost a great man and I have lost my
best friend.
We must continue the works of J.A.Kong for the future. I will encourage a
group taking care of PIER Symposium, PIER and JEMWA publications, the publications
on line, the development of the Electromagnetic Academies and why not the
creation of a foundation to preserve and continue his mission.
Tribute to Professor J. A. Kong
by Prof. Weng Cho
Chew, in Memorial Service of PIERS2008 Hangzhou, March 26, 2008
Ladies and Gentlemen, Colleagues and Friends:
Professor Kong's sudden departure both shocked and saddened us. I was looking
forward to seeing him at PIERS 2008 in Hangzhou and alas…
I have known Professor Kong ever since I was a freshman at MIT in 1973. He
was also my Freshman Advisor at MIT. Being new to a foreign culture and a
foreign country, Professor Kong was the kindest and the most approachable
professor I knew. He was also helpful and inspiring in to his undergraduate
advisee.
It was a well known fact among MIT students that he was a marvelous teacher.
He taught us what it meant to be a good classroom teacher. For those of us
who become teachers in our career, we try our best to emulate him in our teaching...
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Tribute to Professor J. A. Kong
by Prof. Ari Sihvola,
in Memorial Service of PIERS2008 Hangzhou, March 26, 2008
Spacetime exists, Spring Comes, Sun Shines Hangzhou
It was West Lake with whom you fell in love
We too. But how can we protect the loved one?
With clouds? Wave fronts distort, the fields decay.
Your no-show at this conference
leaves everyone without say.
Professor Kong,
why did you do this thing to us?
But lucky those who absorbed the radiation.
May it reflect from them and retransmit!
And at the same time keep what was emitted.
Transform to something greater, yours, and theirs!
Unpredictable is life, so wonderful and long
Beyong life goes electromagnetics, yes, it lives longer.
Yet we feel the blue attenuation
For wind blows cold and bitter in New England.
Farewell, Prof. Kong
by Dr. C-K Chou, Motorola in
Florida in Memorial
Service of PIERS2008 Hangzhou, March 26, 2008
I am C-K. Chou, work for Motorola in Florida. Same as Prof. Kong, I am also
from Nanjing. He loved Shanghai style steamed dumplings. I liked that too.
He graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the National
Taiwan University in Taipei, me too but six years later.
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My memory of Prof. J. A. Kong
by Professor Min Chen, Physics
Department, MIT
It so happened that on January 20, 2008, I wrote a newspaper article on "how
a devoted scholar returns more to his society than what he receives from the
society in a way which can be perceived as a leaf falls in the autumn, protects
its roots in the cold winter and nourishes the tree in the spring mud."
As a good example, I cited Prof. J. A. Kong, who teaches and runs large research
projects, not only at MIT, but also at many other institutes including Zhei-Jiang
Univ. and Beijing Jiaotong Univ.
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谨以此文悼念我逝去的恩师－孔金瓯教授
by Dr. Hongsheng Chen,
Professor Jin Au Kong's first PhD student in ZJU.
每年的春天，美国东部花粉肆虐，许多人都会花粉过敏，咳嗽、感冒。记忆中，每年的这个时候，孔老师都会生病一场。然而今年的情况却与往常很不一样，已经一个月了，发给孔老师的email都如石沉大海，后来得知孔老师在做身体检查，在美国MIT的课程已经让孔老师在MIT的副手代上。心中默默地等待着孔老师能够象往年一样很快康复，重返他喜爱的讲台，重回他热爱的浙大、美丽的西湖......
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"天涯杂谈"纪念孔金瓯教授
作者：limy_opt 2008-3-16
http://cache.tianya.cn/publicforum/content/free/1/1159621.shtml
昨日听说孔教授逝世，非常伤心，他是我在浙大最尊敬的老师之一。在听孔教授的课程之前，我已经听过很多人讲的电磁学。这些老师有些喜欢用PPT上课，说推导过程回去自己算，记住结果就可以，这样的课程往往上课时不能跟上老师的思路，几乎变成自学；有些老师则喜欢一边拿着教案或者参考书，一边在黑板上抄写公式，大段大段的公式使我们昏昏欲睡，依然是学不透电磁学。2002年暑假，听说有个MIT教授上电磁学，还有4个学分，我想见识一下MIT的教授上课有什么不同，就选了这门课。这是孔教授第一次在浙大上课，最早听他在浙大上课的学生，如今应该没有几个还留在浙大的了，而我有幸就是其中之一。
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沉痛悼念我的恩师--孔金瓯教授
作者: alicelucyxx
浙江大学缥缈水云间bbs EM版
我永远也不会忘记2008年3月14日早晨，被师兄叫到办公室，他对我说的第一句话 “孔老师去世了”。啊--当时我情不自禁地大叫了一声，以为自己听错了，五雷轰顶,
真如晴天霹雳一般。等到缓过神来，看到网站上正式发出的消息，以及BBS上消息满天 飞的时候，我才明白：我的导师，孔金瓯教授，真的再也不能见您一面，再也听不到
您那风趣幽默又生动的讲话了。
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悼念我的恩师孔金瓯教授
作者: albert
浙江大学缥缈水云间bbs EM版
14号晚上突然接到电话说孔教授去世了，我的心就一下子沉了下去。
让我追悔莫及的是来cambridge之后就没有去看过他。上学期很忙一直没有去看他，学期末的时候去了一次，可是他已经回国了。他和其他学生说，某一次在路上看到过我，和mit这么近为什么不来看看他呢。当时我就觉得好愧疚，总是给自己找理由，忙，很忙，非常忙，忙到半年内经过mit无数次都没有进去看过他。于是我想这学期开学一定要去。可惜的是去了几次都没有见到，听说身体不好，6.632就上了一次，然后一直在家休息。给他带了礼物，放在他学生那里，我说等他身体好了回来的时候帮我给他吧，可是没想到的是他居然再也没有机会见到我给他带的礼物了，我也再也没有机会见到他了...
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我记忆中的孔教授
作者：Wolfhiller
浙江大学缥缈水云间bbs EM版
噩耗传来，88震惊，举校悲恸！
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真的不愿意相信...
作者：MKoo
浙江大学缥缈水云间bbs ISEE版
当有人发短信告诉我孔金瓯教授去世时,我一点都不相信.
当她说已经上十大了,我还是不相信.
当她说百度上也说了,我依旧是不相信.
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默哀孔金瓯老师
作者：yibada
http://blog.yibada.com/index.php/uid-40640-action-viewspace-itemid-739
近日突然闻到噩耗, 孔金瓯老师在本月去世了, 原因是肺炎. 我突然心理感到很大的哀痛. 孔老师作为电磁学领域的泰斗学者, 他的人格深深地影响了我们,
也指导帮助了我们很多.
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MIT EECS Announcement 和我的怀念
作者: bychance
http://bbs.zju88.cn/cgi-bin/bbstcon?board=EM&file=M.1205562027
一代宗师悄然逝去，孔教授早已把自己的生命融入进那美妙的电磁世界，融入进那浩瀚奥妙的宇宙，所以他应该是安祥地走的。 学生们不会忘记他矍铄的眼神，矫健的步伐，对宇宙之规律的赞叹、欣赏和求索，以及那充满教学艺术、彰显科学之美的板书...
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