Guest Editorial, Petr Zuman 90th Birthday Issue

This issue of Electroanalysis is dedicated to Professor Petr Zuman on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Petr was born in the beautiful city of Prague in former Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic, on January 13, 1926. Petr's secondary school education ocurred under the trying conditions of the World War II, when the Czech countries were occupied from 1939–45. In that time, Petr's father was sent in a concentration camp, and later so was Petr himself. After the war, Petr enrolled in Charles University in Prague to pursue his love of chemistry, and graduated in 1948. He then joined the research group of Nobel Prize winner J. Heyrovsky at the same University and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1950. In that time Prof. Heyrovsky selected him and other five young scientists to create Polarographic Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. He worked there from 1950 to 1966 as a head of the group of Organic Polarography and became a major influence on that newly developing area of research. Due to his remarkable scientific achievements (he obtained the highest scientific degree of Doctor of Science in 1960) he was appointed in 1966 for four years as a visiting research fellow at the University of Birmingham. In 1968, after the Soviet invasion of his own country, Petr and his family decided to stay in England and he began a worldwide search for a permanent Professorship. In England he also learned to make very strong British tea to the joy (or determent) of future grad students with whom he shared this uniquely bracing beverage nearly every afternoon for the next 40 years. In 1970, Petr accepted an appointment as Professor of Chemistry at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. He loves Potsdam and especially the neighboring beautiful and wild Adirondack mountains. Here we're showing one of our favorite pitures of him with Lake Placid in the background. Petr has been an unusually prolific author. While his life's work has focused predominantly on organic electrochemistry, he has also made significant contributions in areas of inorganic and biological electrochemistry. Petr has authored over 500 research papers and 15 books since 1945. Of the books, perhaps the best known is “Substituent Effects in Organic Polarography” (Plenum Press, New York, 1967). In this book, he forged strong links between then emerging areas of modern electrochemical methods and physical organic chemistry, particularly in the use of linear free energy relationships to interpret substituents effects on redox properties of organic molecules. This book along with “The Elucidation of Organic Electrode Processes” (Academic Press, New York, 1969) embodied Petr's influence on methodology to study organic electrochemical reaction mechanisms. Analogous aproaches can now also be found in inorganic electrochemistry, bioelectrochemistry, and electroanalytical research. With Lou Meites, Petr also compiled six volumes of organic and seven volumes of inorganic electrochemistry data (“Handbook Series”) in an incredibly broad overview of all published electrochemical papers until the 1980s. His books and research papers have positively influenced the careers of multiple generations of researchers worldwide. Petr's greatest achievements go well beyond his excellent and voluminous body of research work. Petr is a direct link to the birth of modern electrochemistry and to Prague in the days when Prof. Heyrovsky and his team invented and refined polarography as the world's first quantititive electrochemical methodology. Petr's role in the use of his beloved polarography and dropping mercury electrode to investigate detailed pathways of electrode reactions and other chemical processes was in large part to teach those who followed how to approach problems and how to solve them using the methodologies he helped to create. Indeed, Petr's methodologies extend well into the world of modern voltammetry and solid electrodes. He did not only use electrochemical methods for his research. Any technique that he thought would provide important information was brought to bear on the problems. He did his very best to pass these qualities on. A rigorous approach and tireless investigative spirit are intergral components of Petr's research life. These personal qualities are related to two of Petr 's non-scientific activities. As a boy, he was active in the Czech YMCA, where he learned friendship, social responsibility, reliability and love of nature, all connected with and supported by the spiritual dimension of life. His sense of fair play and a sporting spirit manifested themselves later during his career as a basketball player and, mainly as an international basketball referee. In addition, Petr loves music and theatre. He attends regularly concerts in Potsdam' Crane School of Music, and visits the opera in Montreal and Ottawa. Whenever he comes to his belowed Prague, he first makes a list of theatre pieces or concerts performed during his stay and orders the tickets for nearly every night. As his students, collaborators, and associates, the three of us also have seen the “non-scientific” side of Petr Zuman. He is a very kind man who is immensely interested in the people he works with and has taught. He was simultaneously a teacher, mentor and a father to students in his research groups. Research with Petr is always a partnership, no matter if you are an undergraduate or graduate student or a collaborating Professor. Petr always insisted to the students in his research group that you worked with him, not for him. It is truly a pleasure and an honor to have worked with Petr and to have experienced his strong and very personalized mentorship. It is wonderful to have him as a colleague, and our pleasure to assist the electrochemical community in honoring Petr with this volume dedicated to him. Happy 90th Birthday, Petr! James F. Rusling Jiri Ludvik Flavio Maran Storrs, CT, USA Prague, Czech Rep. Padova, Italy

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