Prof. Dr. habil. Nicolae Popovici 1965 - 2022
It is with deep sorrow that we learned about the unexpected death of our dear colleague, member of the editorial board of the journal Optimization, and very good friend Nicolae Popovici on June, 2nd, 2022.
Nicolae was an inspirational person who will be greatly missed by the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at Babeş-Bolyai University (BBU), Cluj-Napoca (Romania), and by his many friends in the optimization community. Nicolae was a humanly admirable person and an excellent mathematician. We will keep the memory of his kindness, his discretion, his simplicity, his good humour, and his passion for mathematics.
Nicolae Popovici graduated from BBU with a Mathematics degree in 1988. In his studies and thesis ‘Optimizare Pareto’, he had been inspired by his academic professors Ioan Maruşciac and Ioan Muntean. He continued at the University of Limoges (France) under the supervision of Professor Michel Théra where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1995 with the thesis ‘Contribution à l’optimisation vectorielle’.
In March 2016, Nicolae Popovici received Habil. Mathematics at the BBU with the thesis ‘The role of generalized convexity in vector optimization and related variational problems’.
After working as an Assistant Professor (1990–1994) and lecturer (1994–2007), he was appointed an Associate Professor (2007–2016) at BBU. In 2016, Nicolae Popovici became a Full Professor at the same university. He was working as a member of the Council of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science and a member of the Senate of the university. Nicolae Popovici taught courses in Calculus, Functional Analysis, Operations Research, Vector Optimization, Decision Theory, Convex Analysis, Multicriteria Optimization, and Dynamic Optimization.
The mathematical works of Nicolae Popovici, whose original ideas have influenced various fields in mathematics such as optimization, convex analysis, generalized convexity, geometry, and locational analysis, are cited by many authors. Nicolae Popovici’s originality arises from his ability to put and answer profound questions, and so many co-workers have benefited from his deep mathematical thinking.
Professor Popovici published four books: Vector Optimization (2005, in Romanian), Convexity and Optimization: An Introduction (2006), Problems of Operations Research (2006, in Romanian), Problems of Convex Analysis in Rn (2003, in Romanian). The last three books mentioned above are a joint work with his colleague Brigitte Breckner. He is also the author of more than 65 papers, published in international journals, in collaboration with over 20 scientists. One of his most popular papers, Pareto reducible multicriteria optimization problems (Optimization, 54, 253-263, 2005) is widely seen as an important contribution to the field of vector optimization.
Nicolae Popovici received the Romanian Academy Award in Mathematical Sciences (“Spiru Haret” Prize for 2005, awarded December 2007). Furthermore, he was an Associate Editor of international journals: Mathematica (Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca) and our journal Optimization, for which he worked with great effort and a lot of enthusiasm.
Nicolae Popovici was nonetheless an exceptional human being, an outstanding mathematician, a very good colleague, and a wonderful friend. Nicolae has left us too soon. We will always remember the moments of pleasure that we shared with him and that go well beyond mathematics. He will remain greatly missed by his family, his friends, and the optimization community.
As we finish writing these few lines, we think of his family whom he loved so much, his dear wife Lena, and his children Anca and Petri.