It is our sad duty to announce that Eberhard Wiehr passed away on February 3, 2025. Eberhard Wiehr studied Physics in Bonn and Göttingen, and after he got his PhD in 1969, he became staff member at the Universitäts-Sternwarte Göttingen. He observed solar activity features with telescopes in Locarno, Sacramento Peak, and Tenerife applying tools of spectroscopy and polarimetry. Over the years he became an expert how to handle the instruments and to obtain best observational data.
In the mid of the eighties of the previous century, he organized the modification and shift of the Gregory telescope from Locarno to Tenerife. Once the telescope was running again, he participated in many observations, often as PI, and was author or co-author of many publications coming from this telescope.
At this time, a group of people at Locarno was trying to refurbish the solar telescope. Eberhard Wiehr got aware of this initiative and offered his help with scientific advice and optical work, and he organized that spare parts existing at the University of Göttingen could be used to make the\ telescope in Locarno functional again. He used this telescope to observe solar prominences and perfected the method to measure very faint spectral lines.
Around the millennium, the University of Göttingen brought the different institutes of physics together in a new building. Eberhard Wiehr had a significant influence to shape the part for the Institute for Astrophysics.
In 2004, he officially retired, but he continued being engaged in science, and he performed more observations in Tenerife and Locarno. Results from these observations he published, still at a quite high rate of roughly one article per year. His cooperation with Götz Stellmacher (Paris) was ongoing and lasted for an extraordinary time of more than half a century.
Who ever met him, remembers his vivid scientific presentations and often controversial discussions, however, his effervescent personality partly concealed a generous charter ready for dialogue and support. Beside his scientific engagement, he had a great passion for life, nature and culture. We remember a manifold of hikes around the observatories and a variety of other events together with him.
He left behind two daughters, Ulrike and Katharina.
Horst Balthasar and Michele Bianda