IRPA mourns the loss of Wolfgang Weiss,

Dr. Wolfgang Weiss passed away recently following a long and productive career in Radiation Protection.

Dr. Weiss earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Physics from the University of Heidelberg, completing his doctorate in 1975. After graduation he acccepted a post-foctoral position at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts (USA), where he investigated the distribution of fallout in the world's oceans from the era of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, a line of inquiry he continued to pursue in subsequent years. In 1982, he was appointed teh Director of the Institute for Atmospheric Radioactivity in Freiburg Germany, where he was involved in environmental surveillance programs with a strong emphasis on measuring noble gasses. His work in environmental monitoring continued in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident, including his work in emergency preparedness and in helping to establish environmental monitoring systems near a number of Russian nuclear power plants.

In the mid-1990s Dr. Weiss was asked to advise the German government during international negotiations regarding the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, after which his institution began hosting an aerosol and noble gas station as part of the CTBT monitoring network.

Dr. Weiss was also quite active in a number of other international organizations, including serving as the German delegate to UNSCEAR and eventually serving as Vice Chair and Chair of the organization. He finished his career as Head of the Department of Radiation Protection and Health of Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection, from which he retired in 2012. Most recently, Dr. Weiss served as Chair of IRPA's International Programm Committee for the recent IRPA 15 Congress in Seoul, South Korea, and he was also active in a number of other international organizations, including the ICRP, for whom he served on a number of Task Groups and served as a member (and later as Vice-Chair) of Committee 4 for over a decade.

In the course of his career, Dr. Weiss earned the respect and the friendship of many in the Radiation Protection Community. His loss will be keenly felt by all who knew him.