Prof. Dr. Rudolf Kaiser passed away

[Gerhard Kratz]

Dear community,

I was shocked yesterday to recieve the information that Rudolf Kaiser has passed away on August 6th. It was an honor to work together with Rudolf during his classes at the Institut of Chromatography in Bad Duerkheim many years ago. Rudolf worked in HPLC and of course GC. We will keep his memory. RIP Rudolph

[bunnahabhain]

As a guy living in Bad Dürkheim, let me tell you a little anecdote.
For those not knowing, every year in autumn there is the "Wurstmarkt", the largest wine festival in the world. People here tend to comparing it to the Munich Oktoberfest. Back in 1985 (I was 7 and only know from reading about this issue) there was the diethylene glycol wine scandal, where mainly austrian winemakers artificially sweetened their wines and exported it for (also illegal) blending into German wines in German bottling facilites. As the throughput of wine is obviously very high in such a festival, and the toxicity of the diethylene glycol was pushed by the media, high concerns about the safety of wine in general arose. Local winemakers feared, that tourists would avoid the festival due to the bad image of wine. It was Rudolf Kaiser who saved the reputation of the palatinate winemakers by testing the local wines before they were served at the Wurstmarkt, and thus became a (now mostly forgotten) local hero in Bad Dürkheim for saving the 1985 Wurstmarkt.
RIP, I wish you unlimited access to Pfälzer Riesling-Schorle!

[Peter Apps]

One of the founding fathers - there cannot be many of them left now.