On 16 January, 2001 Jan Zytkow died in the early age of 56 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. He had an open heart surgery one week ago because of cancer obstructing blood flow. A few days after surgery he passed away due to cancer. His disease appeared completely inconceivable to his friends, since he never mentioned his disease and until recently was very active and seemed to look fine. But perhaps his possession of elaborating his creative ideas prevented him from paying attention to early somatic warning signals. Jan Zytkow obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Warsaw in Physics (1967), Philosophy (1970), and Philosophy of Science (1972). He was Professor (Philosophy, Psychology, Computer Science) at the universities of Warsaw (until 1982), Carnegie-Mellon (until 1984), Wichita (until 1997), and Charlotte (since 1997). His name became well known in the scientific community by his numerous publications. Already in the 80s he has been active in research on automation of scientific discovery (ASD). His research was motivated by the intellectual curiosity about discovery and by the quest for automating intelligence. At Carnegie Mellon, where his early work was influenced by the cooperation with Herbert Simon and Pat Langley, he belonged to the pioneers of Scientific Discovery who developed the first ASD systems like BACON and FAHRENHEIT. In the early 90s he belonged to those important contributors to the first KDD meetings who had established ASD, having performed at that time already more than a decade of intensive research on automation of discovery prior to the origination of KDD. He was obsessed by the idea of automating discovery and he initially demonstrated that different isolated steps of discovery can be done by computer systems. After developing a number of methods that provided such existential proofs, his next natural task was to integrate many discovery capabilities in one system. He then focused the major part of his research work on the more practical discoveries of KDD that are applied to individual domains. His 49er system demonstrated, that KDD can learn from the experience of ASD, primarily from discovery systems which are more automated than most KDD systems, and can discover forms of knowledge not yet much considered in KDD. A large number of valuable scientific publications flew out of his diligent brains. Unfortunately the deceased could not enjoy any more the satisfaction to see published his recent Handbook on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, since editing of the handbook was finished only shortly before his death and will appear soon. As a member of several scientific societies (such as SIGKDD) he devoted all his strength to advance the organization of the discovery field. He has met his responsibilities of co-editing journals and conference series with great emphasis. As editorial board member, he belonged to the most conscientious reviewers of many articles for several journals. Jan Zytkow had a large pleasure in teaching and discussing his knowledge. He has always been full of plans and ideas. Although having enjoyed already for a long time his residence in the United States, where he was very enthusiastic about the free and independent philosophy of life, he kept affectionate patriotic ties to his Polish homeland. As a member of the Polish Academy of Science and the founder of the European Conference on Principles of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (which he created in 1997 and very successfully chaired until last year), he propagated the KDD fundamentals in Europe. He always conserved his independent judgment not readily following fashionable trends. His friends and collaborators will always remember his optimistic way of life, his vitality and joy of living. They will miss his ardor and integrity. An excellent personage and internationally recommended expert has passed away. His live finished much too early, but has resulted in rich fruits. We will gratefully remember him.
Our condolences are addressed to his wife and their four children.
Willi Kloesgen