On October 28th, 2005, Ken-Ichi Kubo, Emeritus Professor at the Tokyo Metropolitan University and one of the most distinguished members of our International Advisory Committee passed away.

Prof. Kubo gave important contributions to nuclear reaction theory. His most recent interests were on the mechanism of high energy baryon, photon and lepton collisions and spin polarization. Prof. Kubo was also active in popularization of Science. His work and his contributions to high energy hadron-hadron collisions will be reviewed at the Conference by Prof. Toki.

Ken-Ichi was a life-long friend of mine and an old fellow of Varenna's Conferences. He was for me a bright example of dedication to Science with profound and extensive knowledge also in other aspects of life. He introduced me to Noh and sushi and, with less success, to green tea and made me very fond of Japan's cultural and mundane style of life.

Especially moving is for me his last message. He wrote me on October 11th saying that he could not attend the Conference, giving me many advices on the Conference Program and suggesting names of speakers. Even if some of his sentences were indicative of his state, the general tone was so serene that one could not expect a so rapid end. However when I was informed of his death and I went back to his message I fully realised that this was his last message to a friend and through me to all the friends he had expected to meet in Varenna. His "good bye" I wish to convey you, sure that he will be sorely missed by all us, especially those who had the great fortune of knowing him.

Ettore Gadioli

Prof. Ken-Ichi Kubo passed away on Oct.28, 2005 after a long illness at the age of 69. I would like to report here who he was and provide some information on his researches and his contributions to the society and the university.

In his early research career, he wrote a DWBA computer code, which was necessary to experimentalists for analyzing their data. He was very appreciated for this contribution. He was throughout interested in physics related to spin. He made many publications on various fields in relation with spin physics. He even wrote a book on spin in nuclear physics.

He become a member of the Tokyo Metropolitan University (TMU) in 1978 and established an active group of theoretical nuclear physics. He led a group of about 20 people including staff and graduate course students. He started an executive Committee of the nuclear theory community of whole Japan which included 20 members.

He became the Dean of General Education Department, which corresponds to a Vice President of TMU and the Principal of the High School belonging to TMU. These commitments required heavy administrative work and in the same time he led the nuclear theory group.

He wrote an article of two pages for each volume of "Children Science" (monthly journal) for about 10 years. He tried to introduce forefront research to childrens and organized several open lectures for them.

Hiroshi Toki (RCNP, Osaka University)