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With a deep sorrow, we have to announce that the member of Advisory Board of the journal “Mechanics of Composite Materials,” research worker of the Chalmers Technological University (Göteborg, Sweden), professor Ralejs Tepfers passed away on October 30, 2015. This is a great, irreplaceable loss to our journal. Professor was the initiator of the new direction in the journal — strengthening of concrete structural members with composites. Concrete, which itself is a brittle composite material, exhibit a good restence to compressive loads. Professor Tepfers understood that the combination of concrete with fibrous composites will impart new desired properties to this ancient material and will enhance the resistence of structures to various loads.

Another way of strengthening concrete consists in introducing some amount of metal or polymer fibers into it, thus transforming this material into a classical randomly reinforced one. In his studies, professor Tepfers investigated both the methods for strengthening concrete. More than a fourth of century, he collaborated with our journal and the Institute of Polymer Mechanics. We should also mention that the founder of the institute and journal, A. Malmeister, began his scientific work with the remarkable book “Elasticity and Nonelasticity of Concrete.” This book stimulated many investigations into composite materials and statistical theories of plasticity. Thanks to Ralejs Tepfers, we again returned to the investigation of concrete, but on a higher lever. In one of his last studies, professor Tepfers set up the problem of further improvement of fibrous concrete by automatically varying the amount of fibers depending on the stress level in different areas of a structure. The premature death did not allow him to complete these investigations and to obtain a higher-level material.

All his scientific life Ralejs Tepfers spent in Sweden, but remained a patriot of Latvia and was proud that the native land knew and thought highly of him. In 1996, professor Tepfers became a honorary doctor of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, and was elected its foreign member in 2010.

The staff of the journal “Mechanics of Composite materials and colleagues will retain Ralejs Tepfers in their memory and will endeavor to continue his work.