Professor Peter Lugner and Vehicle System Dynamics
Professor Peter Lugner has recently retired as the Editor-in-Chief of Vehicle System Dynamics, a post he has held for 18 years. As the driving force behind the journal for over half its life, Professor Lugner is largely responsible for the quality and success that it enjoys today. The journal is the ‘written voice’ of the International Association of Vehicle System Dynamics (IAVSD) and we all owe a great debt of gratitude to Professor Lugner.
Peter Lugner was born in 1939 in Vienna, Austria, studied Mechanical Engineering at the Vienna University of Technology, and has been a full Professor at the Institute of Mechanics and Mechatronics since 1994. He participated in most of the IAVSD Symposia since 1977, where he often presented a paper himself (more than 20 papers published in the journal) and stood out with his active participation in the scientific discussions of the presentations. His arguments have always been constructive and gave evidence of his great experience in the theory and practice of the dynamics of both road and rail vehicles. Peter has in addition organised workshops, which have contributed to the journal with special volumes, which he also edited. He particularly encouraged young scientists to take an active part in the scientific community and publish their work in the journal. Though the journal was initially introduced in Europe, the international scope of the journal was his major concern both with respect to circulation and the international spread of authorship. The IAVSD is deeply grateful to Peter for his tremendous effort on their behalf to promote vehicle dynamics as a science.
The journal became part of Peter's life and has accompanied him since 1990. He has handled close to 1000 manuscripts for publication in the journal, involving a huge correspondence with authors, reviewers and the publisher, first by mail and since 2006 by an electronic manuscript handling system. He has supervised the transition of publisher from Swets & Zeitlinger to Taylor & Francis in 2004, liaising with many different contact personnel, and he has throughout successfully made the continuity of the high quality and integrity of the journal his personal mission.
Professor Lugner will become emeritus in October 2008 and the Editors of this journal and the President of the IAVSD on behalf of our vehicle dynamics community wish Peter a long, happy and healthy retirement and we all hope that he will long continue to support our research at the highest level.
Signed:
Current Editors – Mehdi Ahmadian, Shinichiro Horiuchi, Simon Iwnicki, Manfred Plöchl
Previous Editors – Karl Hedrick, Ron Anderson, Masato Abe, Andrew Alleyne
Taylor & Francis – Meloney Bartlett, Toby Selwyn, Richard Steele
IAVSD President – Hans True