Obituary

Published in Int. Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering Vol. 67 (2), pp. 158-159, 2006
doi: 10.1002/nme.1511

Abstract

Professor E. M. Alf Samuelsson from Chalmers University, Göteborg, Sweden, died on the 3rd of June 2005 at the age of 75 after a lengthy illness. Professor Samuelsson was an engineer with Professor Sven-Olof Asplund’s ConstructionCompany from 1952 to the time he joined Chalmers University in September 1954. In 1963 he completed his doctoral thesis with Professor Asplund on the subject of analysis of framedstructures by use of algebraic topology. He was beloved by students, colleagues and co-workersand was known as ‘Alf’ by all. Through his foresight and deep knowledge in many fields Alfcreated a strong group in Computational Mechanics at Chalmers University, which he led until his retirement in July 1994. Under his leadership the Department of Structural Mechanics flourished and has been widely recognized for its many scientific contributions. Alf supervised a large number of doctoral students of which nine have become professors. Alf was, formany years, the Dean of Research at Chalmers and has contributed much to the University’s development.