A great loss to the scientific community

23 May 2019

Photo: DESY

The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging mourns the loss of of one of its most renowned members: Prof. Wilfried Wurth passed away unexpectedly at the age of 62. The funeral service will take place on Friday, 24 May, at 2 p.m., at the protestant church in Feldkirchen near Munich.

“This is a huge loss for us. Wilfried Wurth was a highly respected colleague, who was an advocate for science and the community. We will miss his calm personality, his sharp analysis, and his expertise,” said Prof. Henry Chapman, Prof. Klaus Sengstock, and Prof. Horst Weller, the spokespersons of the cluster of Excellence “CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter”.

Wilfried Wurth was a faculty member at the physics department of Universität Hamburg for almost 20 years and an expert in X-ray spectroscopy who specialized in the investigation of ultrafast processes, such as the real-time observation of atomic dynamics at surfaces. He was a leading scientist at the cluster of excellence CUI and the new cluster CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter. At the same time he was a driving force for promoting the Centre of Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL), he significantly contributed to establishing the partnership between the City of Hamburg, DESY, the Max Planck Society, and Universität Hamburg, and was a leader of the Advanced Study Group of Universität Hamburg at CFEL. In addition, Wilfried Wurth headed the free-electron laser FLASH and, since 2014, was a lead scientist at DESY.

The science community mourns the loss of one of its pioneers in research at free-electron lasers.