Rudolf M. Bock#

Rudolf Bock, one of the pioneers of the field of 'Ultra-relativistic Nuclear Collisions and the Quark-Gluon Plasma', started research with heavy ions more than 50 years ago, first at low energies at the MPIK tandem accelerators in Heidelberg, then at higher energies at the Berkeley Bevalac (and later SIS-18 at GSI). In the 1960ies, he was the first scientist from western Europe to start a fruitful collaboration with JINR in Dubna, and later on with the Kurchatov Research Centre in Moscow. From the 1980ies on, research with ultra-relativistic projectiles started at the CERN SPS and the BNL AGS, ultimately leading to the Au beam program at RHIC and the Pb beam program at the LHC. Rudolf Bock's role in this development was pivotal in many places: he is one of the 'founding fathers' of GSI, initiated the Pb-injector at CERN, helped in key advisory roles for RHIC, and provided the fertile grounds for the careers of two generations of now world-wide leading researchers in the field. Starting about 30 years ago, he also initiated and shaped the inertial confinement fusion and associated plasma physics program in Germany with world-wide connections. To this day, his advice and keen foresight (he proposed nearly 40 years ago, e.g., a "SIS100" accelerator which is now the key component of FAIR) is sought by many people.