Obituary of Robert Blinc (1933-2002)

Robert Blinc, Professor of Physics at the University of Ljubljana and member of several Academies of Sciences, passed away September 26, 2011. He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia on October 31, 1933 and was a leading Slovene physicist in the past decades. After obtaining his Ph.D. at the University of Ljubljana in 1959 he spent a postdoctoral year with Professor John Waugh at MIT. Back in Ljubljana he joined the new NMR laboratory at the J. Stefan Institute, and developed it into one of Europe’s leading NMR laboratories. Robert was talented in explaining experimental results with models describing their physical content. He became the world expert in application of magnetic resonance to phase transitions.

Robert’s main interest was ferroelectrics, starting with hydrogen bonded ferroelectrics including proton glasses and incommensurate insulators, continuing with relaxor ferroelectrics and very recently multiferroics. His early work is most known for the Blinc-de Gennes model for hydrogen bonded ferroelectrics and for their proton tunneling mechanism. His further work included ferroelectric liquid crystals, pseudospin glasses, and fullerenes. Robert and coworkers made remarkable achievements, such as predicting the phason Goldstone mode in helicoidal ferroelectric liquid crystals, and discovery of a relaxation mechanism via nematic order fluctuation in liquid crystals - known as the Pincus-Blinc model. He proposed and directed experiments that provided the first NMR detection of incommensurate phasons and amplitudons and measurements of their energy gaps. He determined the Edwards-Anderson order parameter in proton and deuteron glasses. Robert developed together with Pirc and Tadic the spherical random bond-random field model of relaxors. He revealed the nature of ferromagnetism in the organic ferromagnet TDAE- C₆₀, and explained the giant electromechanical effect in PMN-PZT relaxors as originating in existence of a critical end point.

Robert was Professor of Physics at the Physics Department of the University of Ljubljana. He directed the Ph.D. theses of 35 graduate students, many of whom have made important contributions to solid state physics and are well-established professors of physics. Recently he was Dean of the postgraduate school of the J. Stefan Institute.

Robert collaborated with many scientists and was a visiting professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, the ETH in Zurich, the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; the University of Vienna, the University of Utah (where he became an adjunct professor), Kent State University in Ohio, Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, and others.

He made significant contributions to many scientific organizations. In 1990-96 he was President of the Groupement AMPERE, and in 1986-1999 he was President of the European Steering Committee on Ferroelectricity. He presided over major activities at the J. Stefan Institute and the University of Ljubljana, and was active in the Slovenian Academy of Sciences.

Robert has an extensive publication record including prestigious scientific journals (Nature 3, Science 2, Physical Review Letters 47). His publications have received over 14000 SCI citations. His last book, on Advanced Ferroelectricity, was published by Oxford Science Publications in August 2011 and his best-known book, written together with Boštjan Žekš on Soft Modes in Ferroelectrics and Antiferroelectrics, was published by North Holland in 1974.

He thought pragmatically and stimulated research in applications of NMR for determining the oil contents in seeds, the application of NQR for detecting illicit materials (explosives, narcotics, counterfeit medicines), and for applications of liquid crystals. Robert held several patents.

His scientific work was highly respected and he received several Slovene and international prizes. He was a Fellow of ISMAR, the International Society of Magnetic Resonance, and received in 1977, along with Zavoiski, their prize offered every three years for the most important work in magnetic resonance.

Some personal reminiscences of Robert: He exhibited valuable personality traits even in his very young years. He knew what he wanted to achieve and he worked hard to be successful – whether in physics during his career or in chess in his young years (he was Youth Chess Champion of Yugoslavia). He clearly distinguished what is important from what can wait. He maximized credit due his collaborators and students while minimizing his own. I remember that he would not allow me to suggest him for some European acknowledgement.

Robert enjoyed his family and liked nature, skiing in winter and hiking in summer and swimming all year round. His visitors to the J. Stefan Institute remember him as a gracious host, helping in finding apartments and vehicles and in arranging hiking and skiing and mushroom hunting expeditions. Also memorable was his speaking style at conferences; clear but very rapid and full of ideas!