In memoriam Gábor L. Molnár (1947-2003)
by Attila Vértes and Sándor Nagy
Department of Nuclear Chemistry, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
This page is dedicated to the memory of a talented and successful colleague who was left this world at a rather young age. In spite of the shortness of his life, Professor MOLNÁR's achievements are important both in number and in influence contributing considerably to nuclear sciences.
Gábor L. MOLNÁR was born in Szekszárd, Hungary, in 1947. He received his M.Sc. in physics in 1973 at the Physics Faculty of Lomonosov University, Moscow. Between 1973 and 1976, by elaborating his thesis ”Investigation of Dielectric Relaxation in Nematic Liquid Crystal Systems” at the Central Research Institute for Physics, Budapest, he got his Dr. Univ. title at the Faculty of Science of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, in 1976. Next year, he took a job at the Institute for Isotope Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), where he started to study the inelastic (γ,γ) scattering on nuclei in the energy range of 7.10 MeV under the leadership of Professor Árpád VERES. While visiting the Kurchatov Institute, Moscow, Prof. A. M. DEMIDOV and coworkers called his attention to the potentials of the inelastic neutron collision (n,n') as a tool of research of nuclear structure. Using those ideas, he has built an adequate instrument for such investigations at the Research Reactor in Budapest.
At the end of the 1970s, group theory was applied to the interpretation of the vibrational and rotational (collective) states of nuclei causing a real breakthrough in conventional nuclear spectroscopic studies. His paper published with Michelangelo SAMBARATOV in 1982 on the proton-neutron degrees of freedom has become one of the favorite examples of this phenomenon frequently cited by review papers, monographs and handbooks. He had followed the same high scientific standards while working at home at the Institute of Isotopes, thus contributing a great deal to the development of nuclear research in Hungary. He was a well-known and well-respected member of the new generation of nuclear spectroscopists and structural modelists, helping national research to join the new wave of international studies.
He received his C.Sc. (now considered equivalent to the Ph.D.) in 1983 based on his research on 98Mo and 100Mo nuclei via inelastic neutron scattering.
The work of reconstruction of the Budapest research reactor that started in 1986 made it impossible to go on with his studies in Budapest. Fortunately, by that time, he had already established excellent relationships with the group working on the (n,n') reaction at the Van de Graaff accelerator of Kentucky University. Collaboration with the US team enabled him and a number of his Hungarian colleagues to continue undisrupted experimental work for over a decade.
He summarized the results of his studies at Kentucky in his thesis “96Zr: A New Magic Nucleus” which won him the DSc title of the HAS in 1991. This work has proved that a small group of competent researchers can achieve results of fundamental importance in nuclear physics by making use of a variety of nuclear spectroscopic methods and by carefully analyzing the data obtained for relatively simple states.
By the beginning of the 1990s, the possibilities for doing experimental nuclear physics in Hungary dropped dramatically. However, Gábor L. MOLNÁR found a way of pursuing research by building a centre for prompt gamma activation analysis (PGAA) at the reconstructed research reactor in Budapest.
In 1995, two years after the reactor had started operation again, he succeeded in producing a state-of-the-art measuring system for prompt gamma activation analytical studies and other purposes related to neutron capture and gamma-spectroscopy. The cold source built in 2000 (that uses liquid hydrogen as a moderator) as well as the finetuning of the measuring system improved analytical sensitivities almost two magnitudes. At the moment of writing this introduction, the PGAA system created by Professor MOLNÁR belongs to the best ones in the world regarding both sensitivity and selectivity, and is in a class by itself in Europe.
In recent years, Gábor L. MOLNÁR and his coworkers have applied the PGAA method to solve problems in several fields including both science and technology.
It is only natural that his success in research brought him several honors and invitations from professional bodies. He became a Titular Professor of the Veszprém University, Hungary, and, beside a number of Hungarian professional committees, he represented Hungary in the European Nuclear Society, the International Nuclear Data Committee and was an expert of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
During the two last years of his life we often met in person and were in every-day contact by phone working together on our five-volume "Handbook of Nuclear Chemistry". The last touches on the manuscript were done in October 2003, and the whole set got published by Kluwer, Dordrecht by the end of November. On the very day when the courier service delivered the complimentary copies to us, Gábor felt ill and was taken to hospital. When we presented the handbook to the press in the building of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Gábor was not able to join us. We kept calling his wife, Erika, hoping to hear that he got better so that we could personally hand him over the complimentary copies that he so much deserved. We were, however, very soon disappointed of hope as he passed away in a rather short time. It is little consolation for any of us to know that if the Handbook of Nuclear Chemistry will ever be used with satisfaction somewhere in the world, this will also be so because of Professor MOLNÁR's conscientious contribution to the project as a whole.
Professor MOLNÁR had always been looking to the future. He had set several goals for himself to reach, the fulfillment of which he had partly started already or planned to start later on. The international professional community also had several plans with Gábor. He was to be an invited lecturer of the 11th Conference on Modern Trends in Activation Analysis held in Guildford (England) in June and of the 6th Conference on Nuclear and Radiochemistry organized in Aachen in August 2004.
Lately, he was working as the coordinator of an international team of experts on the long-needed PGAA Handbook to be published by Kluwer, edited and co-authored by himself. He planned to finish this project in the first half of this year.
Many of his plans are waiting for his followers to be carried out now.
Reprinted with permission from Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, Vol. 265, No. 2 (2005); Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest; Springer, Dordrecht
