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Obituary

Baerbel Schack D1952–2003]

On July 24, 2003, Baerbel Schack died unexpectedly in

Roseville, Minnesota, USA, during a scientific visit at the

University of Minnesota. She was a renowned expert on

mathematics and biomedical statistics, in particular dealing

with the analysis of bioelectric signals.

Baerbel was born in Waren-Mueritz in Mecklenburg-

Vorpommern, Germany. After being awarded her diploma in

mathematics, focusing on stochastics, at the State University

of Yerevan, Armenia, she earned her PhD in mathematics at

the University of Jena, Germany, in 1980. She was research

assistant at the Mathematical Faculty of the University of

Jena and worked closely with Gert Grieszbach, her mentor

and friend, on time series analysis and the development of

an EEG mapping and analysis system. From 1992 on she

was research assistant and later assistant professor at the

Institute of Medical Statistics, Computer Science and

Documentation at the University of Jena (Head: Herbert

Witte). In 1997 she received her ‘‘Venia docendi’’ (Habil-

itation) for Medical Informatics at the Faculty for Computer

Science and Automation at the Technical University

Ilmenau, Germany, working on the development of adaptive

methods for the spectral analysis of non-stationary multidi-

mensional bioelectric signals. In 1999 she was awarded the

‘‘Certificate for Medical Informatics’’ of the German Society

for Medical Informatics, Biometrics and Epidemiology. She

was a member of several scientific societies and also

doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2005.04.003

member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal

of Psychophysiology. Recently, Baerbel was considered a

leading candidate for a professorship in ‘‘Biosignal Analy-

sis’’ at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and

Computer Science at the Technical University of Ilmenau,

scheduled to start approximately in the fall of 2003, which

she unfortunately could not assume.

Baerbel was an excellent mathematician and biomedical

engineer and mainly worked on the dynamic spectral

analysis of EEG, MEG and EMG signals. During her last

years she extended and adapted state-of-the-art techniques

and developed several new approaches to gain new insights

into the brain’s activity during different high level cognitive

processes, such as thinking, music perception, memory

processes and language comprehension together with her

colleagues Werner Krause, Hellmuth Petsche, Wolfgang

Klimesch, Peter Rappelsberger and many others including

myself. In particular, she was engaged in developing

methods based on the application of an adaptive fit of

bivariate autoregressive moving average models, an ap-

proach with which she was able to investigate dynamic

neuronal interaction with high time and frequency resolu-

tion. Her analyses of various parameters such as coherence,

bicoherence, cross phase and n:m phase synchronization

during memory and language processing were adding a new

dimension towards a theory on the meaning of brain

International Journal of Psychophysiology 57 (2005) 81 – 82

Obituary82

oscillations and the functional interplay among neural

networks. Most recently, she also studied the temporal

imaging of relations between human myocardial infarctions

and solar activity. She had the power to work hard until late

in the evening and even continued to be creative and alert,

when all of her colleagues were already exhausted and tired.

One of her outstanding qualities was that she was able to

build bridges from her disciplines, engineering and math-

ematics, to different scientific fields by being able to

converse with her many clinical and basic research

colleagues in their scientific vocabulary.

Besides her excellent scientific skills she was a very

warm-hearted, faithful and understanding woman and the

most important thing in her life was to spend time with her

husband and her two children, of whom she was very

proud. She always had a very friendly relationship with

her students, patiently explaining the most complex

mathematical formulae to them. It is for her kindness

and humanity that I shall most remember her, and not only

I but all her students and collaborators greatly benefited

from her generosity in sharing her time and excellent

mathematical knowledge. She really knew how to enjoy

life in a quiet way and had an excellent and inspiring sense

of humor. Being a very dear friend of mine it was always

fun working with her and spending time with her laughing,

eating and drinking.

The scientific community has lost a wonderful person

much too early and we miss her very much but her many

forward-looking ideas and concepts will remain and

hopefully will be applied and used in the future. Baerbel

lives on in her work, but we also celebrate her through our

memories of a very special and dear person.

Sabine Weiss