On 21 November 2002, after a long and serious illness and only a few months since his retirement, Prof Dr Mieczysław Chybicki, a co-founder of TASK Quarterly, forever left our academic society. He was one of the organisers of the Faculty of the Technical Physics and Applied Mathematics of the Gdansk University of Technology, and a long-term director of its Solid State Department.
Professor Chybicki was born in Zgoda, in Lodz Voivodship in 1936. Immediately after graduating in Theoretical Physics at the Lodz University in 1959, he started his scientific career at the school of Prof Ignacy Adamczewski at the Gdansk University of Technology. Except for a 9 month scientific internship at the University of Manchester (UMIST), all of his scientific work was connected with this University. All his scientific dissertations dealt with the physical problems of condensed matter. His scientific work was focussed on five main topics: the electric conductivity of dielectric liquids under the influence of corpuscular radiation (the subject of his PhD thesis, 1966), electron processes in thin-film metal-polymer-metal and metal-polymer-semiconductor structures (DSc thesis, 1978), the electrical and optical properties of oxide glasses, the microscopic theory of electron conductivity in spatially non-uniform dielectric and weakly-conducting thin layers, and computer simulations of the structure and properties of solids (highly disordered systems and nanomechanical properties of metals). The subjects that he involved himself with shortly after his DSc thesis remained among his main interests till the last days of his life. Most of his research was teamwork within numerous national programs or ministry grants. Among the most important accomplishments of Professor Chybicki, cited in specialist international monographs, are: establishing the efficiency of the electric conductivity induction in dielectric liquids by alpha and beta particles; elaboration of a new model of the electric conductivity mechanism in fluids (induced by corpuscular radiation); discovery of electroluminescence in tunnel structures with a polymer layer on gallium phosphide; elaboration of a new method of controllable production of conducting layers on oxide glasses by bombarding them with protons; and the development of new methods to investigate energetic and spatial distribution of traps in thin layers by transient currents' spectroscopy.
An academic teacher for over 40 years, Professor Chybicki was engaged in all kinds of didactic activity - from simple tutorials and laboratory classes, lectures popularising physics under the auspices of the Polish Physical Society actions, lectures in physics at the TV Polytechnic and curricular lectures in general physics at various departments of the University, to highly specialised lectures and seminars in solid state physics. The latter ones were famous for their high level of professionalism and wide range of material - for many students of the Technical Physics Department the two exams in the Solid State Physics at 7-th and 8-th semesters were the most important and most difficult ones during the whole period of studies. Till the last years Professor Chybicki constantly supplemented his lectures with the latest developments in the field of solid state physics, taking into account the practical side and technical implementation of the discoveries. He was the supervisor of many MSc and PhD dissertations and a tutor for students studying individually, a tutor of the Students' Physics Scientific Circle, a co-author of curricula at the Technical Physics and Applied Mathematics Faculty of the Gdansk University of Technology, a co-author of handbooks for the physics laboratory, the organiser of a specialised laboratory of solid state physics. He was also a member of numerous interdepartmental committees and commissions dealing with teaching and didactics of physics. He was a reviewer of many PhD and DSc dissertations.
The range of his organisational interests is, on one hand marked by the functions performed within the structure of the Faculty of Technical Physics and Applied Mathematics, and on the other hand, by the functions connected with his scientific activity. He was successively the director of the Chair of Physics for Electrical Engineering Faculty (1980-1984), the representative of the Physics Faculty in the Senate of the University (1983-1986), vice-dean for education at the Physics Faculty Solid State Physics Department of the Faculty of Technical Physics and Applied Mathematics (1989-1999). During his scientific career, he presided over numerous research projects, took part in organising many national and international conferences, refereed numerous research projects, and reviewed numerous papers for scientific journals, including Acta Physica Polonica, Thin Solid Film, Physica Status Solidi, Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids, Computational Methods in Science and Technology, Computational Material Science.
However, the memories of Professor Chybicki among his co-workers and students are not limited to the above mentioned scientific achievements. He will always be remembered as a person of exceptional uprightness, honesty, justice, modesty, kindness and good humour. His attitude towards science and education or organisational activities was always characterised by wise distance and the feeling of passing time, which was often marked by his repeating the Bible quotation: "All is vanity". The person was always the most important for him. He imprinted in his pupils, apart from scientific abilities, honesty and perseverance in work, as well as a love for what does not pass away with time.


Jarosław Rybicki and Wojciech Sadowski
Gdansk, January 2003