Raimundo O. Vicente

Portugal

1925-2015

Obituary:

http://idl.ul.pt/node/689

Dear colleagues in IAU Commission 19,

with deep sadness and regret I have to inform you about the death of our
commission member Raimundo O. Vicente.

Below please find an obituary forwarded to you on behalf of IAU.
For his contributions to our community Commission 19 shall remember him
with gratitude and appreciation.

Best regards,

Florian Seitz
Secretary of Commission 19

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Raimundo O. Vicente (1924-2015)

On the past April, 3, Prof. Raimundo Oliveira Vicente passed away. He
was graduated in Mathematics and Geophysics by the University of Lisbon.
In the years 1950, he worked at Greenwich Observatory and at the
University of Cambridge (UK), where he collaborated with Sir Harold
Jeffreys on two papers on the theory of nutation and the variation of
latitude, published in 1957, and completed his Doctor Thesis. After
that, he had an intense collaboration with Shigeru Yumi, working at the
International Latitude Observatory (Mizusawa, Japan) in the reduction of
the extended 60-yr series of observations to the CIO (Conventional
International Origin). He was a member of IAU and contributed to promote
the campaign MERIT (Monitor Earth’s Rotation and Intercompare the
Techniques of observation and analysis), a joint activity of IAU
Commissions 19 (Rotation of the Earth) and 31 (Time).

He was an active member of the IAU Theory of Nutation 1984 Working
Group. Later, by invitation of Victor Szebehely, he participated in a
research program of the Center for Space Research of the University of
Texas at Austin, working with Clark R. Wilson on the use of modern
statistical techniques to analyze the polar motion series and to
determine the parameters of the motion of the pole from combinations of
independent series. His collected papers on Geodynamics, Geodesy and
Astronomy were published in Lisbon, in 1989.

He was teaching at the University of Lisbon since 1974 where he leaded
the group of Geographical Engineering. During several decades he paid
yearly visits to Brazil, participating with enthusiasm in the formation
of young investigators, first at the University of São Paulo, and later
at the geodesy programs developed at the University of Paraná and at the
Mackenzie University (which operates the geodetic VLBI station at Eusebio).

He was awarded the 1964-68 “Charles Lagrange” prize of the Royal Academy
of Belgium, awarded every 4 years to recognize contributions to the
modeling of the Earth as a system.