Khazret Nirov
Frank Goehmann (University of Wuppertal, Germany)
Last week I lost my very dear friend Khazretali S. Nirov. His death came unexpected to me. Until his last day nobody had told me that he was ill. As far as I imagine he would have agreed in not telling me. He never wanted to bother anybody, I believe not even with his death.
Khazret came to our place Wuppertal in 2008 and stayed for 11 years. We were office neighbours. During his long stay my fondness of him and my respect for him were constantly growing. Due to the unexpected turns of life we even shared an apartment for a short while. He was a rare type of person, caring more about others than about his own affairs. I know him well, but I do not know much about him, as he almost never talked about himself. How I miss him, how I wish he was still among us. How I wish I could undo all the missed opportunities to ask him questions.
In my work I benefitted much from his deep knowledge of group and representation theory, which he generously shared with other people. He was very kind and patient. If you would have asked him three times, he would have explained three times, with increasing effort. Khazret was a good teacher. With this character, I guess, he was a great and most beloved father of his little daughter. One of the few personal things he told me was how he was reading and singing for her. My sincere condolences to Darina and to Laura. Your loss can only be described in tears.
I lost a very best friend. I will keep him in my memory with respect and stay with deep gratitude for everything he gave me so generously: knowledge, insight, and true friendship.
Andreas Kluemper (University of Wuppertal, Germany)
With Khazret Nirov a good colleague and friend of mine passed away. Without him the life of many of us is changed in various professional and private ways.
I got to know Khazret in 2008 when he was employed at the science department of the University of Wuppertal. Here we interacted frequently due to our joint interest in integrable field theories. Initially Khazret's work consisted in fundamental research and since his doctorate of science in 2009 he worked as associate professor. In this position he gave courses for graduate students as well as for undergraduates, and he supervised the thesis work of PhD students. Khazret Nirov's scientific work is well documented and will not get lost. Here, I like to seize the opportunity to remind of his work as teacher and colleague.
Khazret gave courses consisting of lectures and tutorials. His lecturing activities started in the winter semester 2010/11 on Classical Integrable Systems'. Then in 2012, the course 'An Introduction to Quantum Integrable Systems' followed and 'Groups and Representation Theory' in the summer semesters 2013 and 2015. In 2020 Khazret gave an online course on 'Quantum Integrable Systems' for our students and collaborators. This course, held at a time of severe travel restrictions due to Covid-19, had a great impact as it was attended by participants on several continents.
Khazret's lectures were always well received by the students. His cooperative attitude to the teaching obligations and his calm nature were well appreciated by his colleagues. In passing I like to mention that Khazret managed to give all the lectures, which were held locally at Wuppertal University, in flawless German.
Khazret Nirov's teaching activities in addition to his research were very helpful for my university and for the theoretical physics group. With his research and his educational input Khazret belonged to the backbone of the successful application for a large scale research grant by DFG. Our last joint research focused on correlation functions of integrable models and applications. Khazret had performed systematic studies of quantum groups and their representations that allowed for the first successes in understanding how to tackle higher rank systems. In general, Khazret also supported my research and that of my colleagues in fields that were not of prime interest to him, but still fell into his expertise and allowed him to give us advanced talks on timely topics.
As is often said, life goes on for the bereaved. However, our just installed joint German-Russian research program will look very different without Dr. Khazretali S. Nirov and the social get-togethers in Khazret's home will not happen anymore. What I am truely missing is Khazret himself.