From Don and Marilyn Beran
Meeting Uwe, Anita and Jacque at the airport in Denver Colorado in the mid 1960 is my first memory of the man who had an immeasurable impact on my life. Starting with helping to get them settled at Colorado State University through our last visit in Coffs Harbor, Australia, our paths crossed more times than I can remember. Each encounter with Uwe’s down-to-earth outlook and considerable wisdom left me with fond memories and an enlarged view of what is important.
In my mind there is little doubt that the most cherished interaction with Uwe resulted from his invitation to spend three years in his department at the University of Melbourne. While I can’t be sure if he felt the gamble paid off, I will forever be grateful for the opportunity that he gave me. He and Anita made sure that Marilyn and I were accepted as part of the family and made to feel at home and welcome in what to us was a strange city. I do suspect that after many long hours of thesis rewriting, his patience may have been thinning a bit, but like the outstanding mentor he was, he stuck with me through the long graduate school process.
I now know what it means to have a second father. Uwe gave me the guidance and support that was truly father like, and I will be forever grateful that he was part of my life.
Good by dear friend.
Don Beran
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• I remember Uwe riding a bicycle backwards around the car park between the original Meteorology Nissen hut and Tribophysics at Melbourne University.
ReplyDeleteI also remember a 1967 student party in a rented house I shared in south Carlton (Uwe would have been in his early 50's). The party was in “honour of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Meteorology Department” (any excuse will do for a student party) and was attended by Uwe, Fritz Loewe and Peter Schwerdtferger among countless others. I have a vivid recollection of Uwe participating in the great Australian tradition – hanging off a Hills rotary clothes hoist and being pushed around by Peter to the enthusiastic applause of Fritz. (Although even vivid memories are hazy 40 years later, and it might have been Peter pushed by Uwe – but I doubt Peter’s legs would have cleared the ground.)
ReplyDeleteAnd lastly, I remember an admonishment from Uwe in 1992 to hasten with the review correction to a paper that we were writing together because he felt that he “didn’t have that much time left”. That was more than 15 years ago!
ReplyDeleteUwe Radok was a wise, kind and very constructive friend and colleague in the development of internationally coordinated glacier observation. He leaves a brilliant light in my memory.
ReplyDeleteWilfried Haeberli, Director, World Glacier Monitoring Service, Zurich, Switzerland
We kept in touch for half a century, I am a retired glaciologist and he too was a glaciologist as much as he was a meteorologist.
ReplyDeleteWe corresponded over the years and met at various times in Cambridge, in Colorado and at various conferences of the International Glaciological Society (of which I was President 1981-1984). We both became involved in international research projects, mostly concerned with the Antarctic.
He was a good friend whom I admired because he always had a better understanding than most of us about the theoretical basis of our science. In international affairs he was forthright and constructive within a worldwide circle of people with common interests.
I mourn his passing and offer my sympathy to his family and to his very wide circle of friends.