This may be less than current, but it was news to me when I saw it in a recent I.M.U. mailing, and it may be of interest to others here as well. : PASSING AWAY OF Friedrich Hirzebruch (1927 - 2012) : : The first president of the European Mathematical Society, Friedrich : Hirzebruch, has passed away. Fritz Hirzebruch studied mathematics at : Münster. In 1956 he became professor at Bonn where he remained until : his retirement. In 1980 he founded the Max-Planck-Institut fur : Mathematik, serving as Director until 1995. His profound contributions : to mathematics – in applications of topology to algebraic manifolds : and number theory – and to German mathematical life, were honoured by : many prizes, including that of the Wolf foundation in 1988 and the : Georg Cantor medal of the DMV in 2004. He was honorary president of : the 1998 International Congress of Mathematics in Berlin. : He was a member of the IMU Executive Committee during the period 1963-66. : European mathematics has lost a great scholar and the EMS has lost one : of its architects. : : Detailed biographies: : http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Hirzebruch.html : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hirzebruch Friedrich Ernst Peter Hirzebruch (17 October 1927 – 27 May 2012) -- Fred [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]