Ulrych was always approachable and generous, never pretentious. ... colleagues, his friends and students were impressed forever. His universal spirit, always ...
THE LEADING EDGE
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Memorial
T
ad Ulrych was born in Warsaw, Poland, to meet. He was far from being a one-dimensional and fled the country with his parents folacademic confined to an office or classroom. At lowing the Nazi invasion in 1939. He obtained a UBC, Ulrych participated every week in ice hockB.Sc. degree in electrical engineering at London ey, soccer, or skiing. Some of his graduate students University, United Kingdom. After a year workfound the secret to communicating with Ulrych was ing in ultrasonics, he moved to Canada, where he to participate in these sports and make an appointgot a job working with Don Russell in his laborament following the game. He was one who enjoyed tory at the University of Toronto. He then moved life to the fullest with the expectation that his stuto Vancouver, where he received both his M.Sc. dents and colleagues should enjoy university life as and Ph.D. degrees (1961 and 1963, respectively) well. His support of graduate students was unwavat the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Tadeusz Jan Ulrych ering — both financially and with intellectual inthe study of lead isotopes. It was there in Vancouput. Ulrych treated his graduate students much like 1935 – 2014 ver during this time that he married and started colleagues rather than as subordinates. He encoura family. His first academic position was as assistant professor aged independent thought and listened with enthusiasm to input at the University of Western Ontario. Following postdoctor- from students. There were many ongoing research discussions al fellowships at Oxford University and at the Bernard Price with his students in the classroom, his office, the coffee room, or Institute of Geophysics at the University of Witwatersrand, the local pubs. Ulrych was always approachable and generous, South Africa, Ulrych joined UBC, where he taught geophysics never pretentious. until he retired in 2000, becoming professor emeritus. He was One of the main characteristics of Ulrych was passion. an invited professor at the Federal University of Bahia, Bra- He was passionate about science, about friends, about women, zil, the University of Kyoto, Japan, and OPERA, University about life. What was his greatest passion? Probably underof Pau, France. Ulrych educated and mentored two (perhaps standing the unknown, and the problem he tried to solve all three) generations of geophysicists who today occupy positions his life: How do we solve for A and B in A + B = C when we in academia and industry. know only C? A worthy task for a great man! All people have Technically, Ulrych was perhaps best known for his work brains, of various shapes and sizes, but few have minds. Ulon maximum entropy spectral estimation, homomorphic de- rych had a mind. Mind goes with soul, and Ulrych had a soul. convolution, bandwidth extension, minimum entropy deconvo- Directly or indirectly, Ulrych was an extraordinarily talented lution, nonwhite processes, eigen-image and rank-reduction fil- teacher to many young and not-so-young people. He was not tering, sparseness in multichannel signal processing, etc. Along only a teacher of signal processing, deconvolution, or inversion. with the fundamentals of time-series analysis, these topics were He was also a teacher of integrity, of honesty, of humanity, of the highlights of his famous graduate course at UBC, “514.” In loyalty, of fidelity. addition to his many papers, he coauthored a book with MauriUlrych had a special relationship with Brazil. First, as a cio Sacchi titled Information-based Inversion and Processing with young physics Ph.D. in the 1960s, he taught the basic knowlApplications. Ulrych also was active in SEG in various capaci- edge of geophysics to the first Brazilian group of engineers ties: SEG Translations Committee, SEG Honorary Member- of the recently created Petrobras. Two decades later, he conship (2004), and SEG Distinguished Lecturer (2008), and tributed at a much more advanced level, forming masters and more recently, he received the 2014 CSEG Medal, the highest doctors in seismic geophysics to constitute the modern techniaward bestowed by the Canadian Society of Exploration Geo- cal staff of Petrobras, who today are responsible for so many physicists. relevant conquests, and the cream of the applied geophysics Ulrych was a superb lecturer. His enthusiasm about any community today in the Brazilian Academy. This happened in field of geophysics he chose to investigate was legendary; it so the 1980s, in the Programa de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação em often infected his students as well as his listeners at technical Geofísica da Universidade Federal da Bahia (PPPG/UFBA). meetings. Ulrych loved to speculate about the philosophical im- With Ulrych’s enthusiasm and passion for the work and for his plications of what he was doing. He was intrigued with Bayes’ colleagues, his friends and students were impressed forever. theorem and could hold forth endlessly about its implications His universal spirit, always open for collaboration, enchanted for the design of geophysical inversion algorithms. Ulrych rarely everybody and created a unique personal relationship with his gave up on a problem he or his coauthors were trying to solve, as students. A strong link of friendship was consequently created those of us privileged to collaborate with him soon learned — he between Ulrych and Brazil. Many times, Ulrych went back to tended to return to the same problem over and over again until a Brazil, for teaching, for visiting, for scientific congresses, and solution materialized — at least, sometimes! for enjoying life with his many Brazilian friends in Bahia, Rio Ulrych was an engaging individual with a wide range of in- de Janeiro, Belém — all those most loved places of Ulrych’s terests. His intelligence and immense knowledge allowed him to in Brazil. A piece of Ulrych is in every place that he visited be one of the most interesting people that one could ever hope and every person who met him. “To die” happens to someone,
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but not for Ulrych, because he will continue in the minds of those he touched, flying over those places he loved so much, laughing in happiness as an explosion of his strong and nice personality. Each new idea Ulrych shared with enthusiasm and generosity. As one of many examples of his spirit of collaboration with colleagues in Brazil, in one of his short visits (1994), Ulrych brought to UFBA ground-penetrating radar (GPR) equipment. This system was a novelty at that time and enthused many geophysicists. The electromagnetic system worked similarly to the seismic reflection method and was tested at the Camaçari Petrochemical Complex in Bahia, in a study of environmental contamination that resulted in a paper presented the following year at SEG with the title “In search of plumes: The GPR Odyssey in Brazil.” Ulrych’s enthusiasm was contagious to everyone, everywhere: in the classrooms, in the Brazilian Geophysical Society meetings, in SEG conferences, in corridors. Ulrych supervised more than 20 master’s and doctoral students at UFBA. He was always quite participative and excited with new ideas and challenges, and his sense of humor and joviality attracted many friends, who will continue to revere his memory and be proud of his acquaintance. Ulrych also loved Japan. He was a person who had a free soul and hated controlling freedom; this might come from the experience of his young days. Ulrych really loved humans. All things Japanese he wanted to observe and investigate. Ulrych could have been a cultural anthropologist instead of a geophysicist. He was free from any limitation, and this is hard to find these days because we need to consider and protect ourselves from the outside world. Only established scientists such as Ulrych can choose this kind of lifestyle and enjoy life more than 100%. His special brand of brilliance deserves mention. Although his facility with mathematics is well known, he also had a tremendous aptitude for languages, perhaps connected to his incredible talent for lateral thinking. It was not enough
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for Ulrych to recount a tale with precise adjectives and always with a healthy dose of superlatives; he felt the need to convey more, to go beyond. He did this with metaphors. He never used the same metaphor twice, so it is impossible to remember them, but they were always surprising, sometimes silly, always insightful and entertaining. A few of us would say that Ulrych’s greatest gift was that he actually taught others how to enjoy life more. Those who have met Ulrych will appreciate his remarkable charisma, generosity, and exquisite sense of humor. He is known for his many and diverse contributions to geophysical research and education in Canada and around the world. The fruits of Ulrych’s friendship, scholarship, and teaching will remain with us. Many of us were fortunate to know him as a friend, a mentor, and a colleague. His old-world style, his friendship, and the pleasure of his company will remain with us for a long time. In addition to his immense individual and collaborative contributions, Ulrych stood in a league by himself for his encouragement of others, often those working far from his own experience and expertise. He was a source of boundless enthusiasm and encouragement for those pursuing new and unconventional ideas and approaches, so essential for scientific advancement. In that way, he multiplied his effectiveness and enormous impact. Without Ulrych, it is a less warm, less fun, and less joyful world; it’s hard to comprehend and believe that he is gone. Ulrych will always be in a special place in our hearts, and we will remember him and treasure those wonderful precious memories, always and forever. Ulrych finished his time series with his family close at hand, including his children, Jason and Lyza, and his grandson, Sebastian. — Carlos Alberto Dias, Evgeny Landa, Scott Leaney, Larry Lines, Milton Porsani, Mauricio Sacchi, Sven Treitel, and Art Weglein
