LOJZE VODOVNIK COLLECTED WORKSIn memoriam to Academy Fellow prof.dr.sc. Lojze VodovnikIn September 2003, in the year when Professor Lojze Vodovnik would have celebrated his seventieth birthday, the book of his Collected Works was published. Publication was edited by his collaborators and was supported by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Naturally, the book could not have been completed and published without the cooperation and understanding of his numerous colleagues and without the permission of numerous publishers, but of course, primarily, without his enormously fruitful scientific life. This book is one outline of "looking back over his life". In the book, sixty-two of the most important papers of Lojze Vodovnik are presented over more than 500 pages. The book encompasses his work from 1959 until 2000, presenting papers published in world-renowned scientific journals. These papers are only a small part of his scientific work. He wrote many books and held innumerable conference presentations and invited lectures. Most of his scientific career was spent at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Ljubljana, where he established a biomedical engineering group which is today recognised worldwide. He was the winner of numerous prizes and awards for his work. He was the full member of the Slovenian Academy of Science and the IEEE Fellow. The earliest papers published in the book are from 1959 (in the year when the IFMBE was founded) when he switched from the enterprise "Elektromedicina" to the job of university assistant at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana. He gained his doctor's degree at a very young age in 1963. In 1964, he left Ljubljana for the Case Western Reserve University, USA, where he met Professor Reswick. This was a unique chance to fulfil his scientific ambitions and curiosity. There, he started to work on problems of functional electrical stimulation, the field of research he stayed devoted to until the end of his life. He strongly believed that, by means of this new rehabilitation method, it would be possible to restore lost functions of paralysed limbs to a high degree. In this field, he published the majority of his work (most of the papers in "Collected works" are devoted to this field) and gained worldwide reputation. He had a vision of the way in which electrical current and stimulation could help patients with motor dysfunctions, patients suffering from cancer and ideas on how to accelerate the healing of wounds. He was also trying to understand the secrets of life from the aspect of self-organisation and information processing in the central nervous system. Convinced of the positive effects of electrical stimulation of different kinds, he created a new therapeutic approach to wound healing. In the last years of his productive work he, as a pioneer, launched the idea of an overall influence of electric currents on living organisms. This scientifically established field is today well known as "cellular engineering". All his life he was a hard working enthusiast and therefore the biomedical engineers all over the world will remember him through his work. When I say "remember", I mean both, not only those who had known him very well, but also those younger colleagues who now read and will read about the man and the scientist, the world fame in the field of electrical stimulation and a pioneer of biomedical electronics and biomedical engineering. He was one of the rare people who had the privilege to enter the history and "encyclopaedia", while he was still alive. He was also a man who never took any advantage of that. He was a hard worker, exceptionally clever, lucid, well-read and scientifically curious. At the same time, he was a great man a with warm and welcoming heart and an understanding for everybody. It was impossible not to be his friend. We can only learn from his life and work. We wish to express our thankfulness to our colleagues and once editors of (D.Miklavcic, T.Kotnik and G.Sersa) for their effort to present such an excellent volume.
Stanko Tonkovic
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