Miscellaneous

IN MEMORIAM of STEFAN IVANOV RUEVSKI

(22 August 1942 - 14 November 2020)

16 November 2020

Surprisingly and most unexpectedly we lost our colleague and dear friend Stefan, or Eci as we all called him. 

Just a couple of weeks ago he was among us, lively as ever, always smiling and ready to tell a joke or share an interesting story. 
Stefan was one of the most long-term employees of Institute of Electrochemistry and Energy Systems (IEES) at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) and one of the few remaining co-founders of its predecessor - the Central Laboratory of Electrochemical Power Sources (CLEPS). He remained faithful to lead-acid batteries and served them devotedly for more than 50 years. Throughout all these years, Stefan accumulated a huge amount of fundamental knowledge about lead batteries and gained extensive experience in the technology of their manufacture. He used his knowledge to help battery plants, in Bulgaria and in many countries abroad, to solve various technological problems and improve their production practices. Stefan was  internationally recognized and highly respected as one of the best experts in the field of lead-acid batteries. 
Apart from his professional expertise, Stefan was one of the most intelligent scientists and a very knowledgeable person. For all of us, his colleagues, Eci was a real encyclopedia, a live reference book not only about batteries, but also about numerous personal and official data, facts, dates, events and stories. We used to check with him about everything. Now we are at a loss and wonder who will help us with such detailed information. Eci, we will miss you very much!

Rest in peace, dear ECI ! We will never forget you!
We extend our most sincere condolences to the bereaved Ruevski family for their irreperable loss. 

With deep reverence from his colleagues:
Geno Papazov, Temelaki Rogatchev, Mariana Gerganska, Boris Monahov, Mariana Cherneva, Margarita Georgieva, Mitko Dimitrov, Vesselin Naidenov, Maria Matrakova, Plamen Nikolov, Georgi Sheytanov, Dina Ivanova, Galya Arnaudova, Yulian Bozhilov, Veselin Vassilev, Sasho Vassilev, Adriana Gigova, Polya Simeonova, Albena Aleksandrova, Mariana Marinkova, Victor Boev, Ognian Dimitrov, Rossitsa Andreeva, Yordanka Kovacheva, Yovka Milusheva, Paolina Atanassova, Boris Shirov, Boris Drenchev
 

Dr. Geno Papazov from IEES-BAS elected as member of the prestigious Alpha/Beta Honor Society 

13 October 2020

The informal group of scientists and inventors with outstanding contributions to the development of the lead-acid battery system, called the Alpha/Beta Society, honored Dr. Geno Papazov from IEES-BAS with election to membership in the society. The Alpha/Beta Society, founded in 1989, appoints only one new member a year.

  
Dr. Geno Papazov was appointed to be the 27th member of the Alpha/Beta Society at a special virtual ceremony held on October 13, 2020. Dr. Juergen Garche (Germany), Grand Master of the Society, stated in his brief presentation of the new member, that Dr. Papazov   was honored with this membership in recognition of his long-term persistent research work, for over 50 years now, dedicated to the advancement of lead-acid batteries. Starting, way back in 1967, with an in-depth research into the processes of formation of the positive active mass, Dr. Papazov gradually gained deeper fundamental understanding of the other processes taking place in the lead-acid battery system and as of today continues to share his knowledge and valuable experience summarized in the course of lectures he presents to battery experts and students throughout the world. 

The Membership Certificate and the special Alpha/Beta Society Badge, received by courier service at IEES, were presented to Dr. Papazov by his colleague Dr. Stefan Ruevski, another doyen of the Lead-Acid Batteries Department at IEES-BAS. Each of the 14 Alpha/Beta Society members attending the virtual ceremony extended a personal welcome message to the new member.

In his speech of thanks Dr. Geno Papazov expressed his gratitude to the other members of the Alpha/Beta Society for having granted him the honor to join the Society and for their warm welcome greetings. He also extended sincere words of thanks to his colleagues and good friends from IEES-BAS (former CLEPS) and shared a kind remembrance of the invaluable experience he gained during the first years of his research career. At that time, Prof. Pavlov, the Head of the Lead-Acid Batteries Department, demanded that every newly appointed young researcher should be commissioned as a worker to one of the battery manufacturing plants in Bulgaria for a couple of months. It was during these months of doing heavy physical work that the young researchers got to know the real problems of the battery manufacturing process and in an attempt to find solutions to these problems, they formulated clearly the research career goals they wanted to achieve.

The high distinction of Dr. Papazov being elected to the Alpha/Beta Society is the latest acknowledgement of the Bulgarian school of lead-acid batteries whose multifaceted research of the lead-acid battery system and the numerous publications in international scientific journals have disclosed the processes during manufacture, operation and storage of lead-acid batteries. This comprehensive knowledge provides a stable basis for further development of the science and improvement of the production technology of lead-acid batteries all around the world. In 1988, the Alpha/Beta Society elected its member № 4 Prof. Detchko Pavlov, the founder and long-term leader of the Lead-Acid Batteries Department, and in 2019 the Society welcomed another ex-member of the research team, Dr. Boris Monahov, as Society member No. 26. 

The Alpha/Beta Society was founded more than 25 years ago by Dr. David Rand (CSIRO, Australia) and Dr. Ernst Voss (VARTA, Germany). The great scientists and inventors Luigi Galvani, the pioneer in bioelectricity and Alessandro Volta, the inventor of the electric battery, were selected posthumously as the first two honorary members of the Society. Dr. Ernst Voss was honored as member No. 3 in recognition of his discovery of the two crystal modifications of lead dioxide - α-PbO₂ and ß-PbO₂. Following a pleiad of prominent scientists elected to membership in the society, the newly appointed members in the past several years are Dr. Jun Furukawa (The Furukawa Battery, Japan) for his contribution to the industrial development and technical realization of the UltraBatteryTM with lead-carbon electrodes, Dr. Allan Cooper (International Lead Association, United Kingdom) for his effective management of major research programs within the international Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium (ALABC) and Dr. Eckhard Karden (Ford Research Centre, Germany) for his investigations of the specific charge acceptance of lead-acid batteries for hybrid electric vehicles.