43 The Israel Chemist and Chemical Engineer Issue 9 · January 2023 · Tevet 5783 History of Chemistry Articles The spelling of words and names in Dutch also sometimes changed. Shimon found on the internet the cover pages of two different books by the same author, where the spelling of the author’s name had changed. This information helped me to refute the claim of a referee, and I could justify my claim that the spelling I wrote was the correct one. I included Shimon Vega’s name in the acknowledgements to my article published that year (2021). When there was a map of the Far East in Latin that I was curious about, Shimon asked one of his students from another country to help in the translation. These are small memories tel ling a little about Shimon’s supportive and friendly personality. I was well aware of the professional appreciation of Shimon, but beyond the scientific conversation, his good heart and his personal and friendly relations encouraged me to get his assistance. He was also a perfect host. Sometimes I arrived at his office in the afternoon from the nearby library or SanMartin restaurant. Upon my request, Shimon served me coffee in his office or, even, when there was a shortage, went to the students’ office in order to get more coffee. And then he fell sick, his illness lasted many months, we hoped for his recovery, but to no avail. I shall miss him very much. On January 18, 2022, at MIT, an online tribute symposium “Remembering Shimon Vega” was organized by his long-time friends and colleagues Robert Griffin, Kong Ooi Tan, Daniella Goldfarb and Lucio Frydman. This seminar is available online [5]. References 1. A. Goldbourt et al., J. Mag. Res. 2022, 340, 107172. 2. A. Goldbourt et al., Ampere Bulletin, 2022, 71, #286, 24–36. 3. S. Vega and Y. Naor, “Triple quantum NMR on spin systems with I=3/2 in solids,” J. Chem. Phys. 1981, 75, 75-86. 4. D. Marks and S. Vega, “A theory for cross-polarization NMR of nonspinning and spinning samples,” J. Mag. Res. A 1996, 118, 157–172. 5. https://youtu.be/gcxP4GgotW8 features, such as the position of the rotary lines. Moving on to less steps and expanding to a windowed version, the scaling factors, the deterioration of efficiency, everything was explained there, by the Floquet theory. To have a theory that correctly predicts experimental outcomes and to be able to confirm it by doing the actual experiment is exactly what science is about. Shimon was always respectful of others. He was humble and always knew something wise to say (or not to say) in challenging situations. I left solid state NMR and moved to imaging. During all the years after my PhD I would call Shimon often to talk about science and life. He was always interested, even in the projects that had little to do with his own research. When DNP reached in vivo imaging we had several interesting discussions about its applications and the future of the technology. After these conversations I always felt enlightened and optimistic about science and life in general. Without Shimon, the world is darker. Shimon, you are greatly missed. Yona Siderer I met Professor Shimon Vega during my doctorate studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. I was running experiments using an electron spin resonance (ESR) machine under the guidance of Prof. Zeev Luz and Prof. Shmuel Malkin, attempting to understand the mechanism of oxygen evolution in plants. Many years have passed. In recent years, Shimon helped me a lot translating titles and texts of old scientific books in Dutch. Those books were cited as the sources of books from which Japanese scholars learnt chemistry in the years 1820–1850 and later. There were original books in Dutch and books that were translated into Dutch from European languages – French, English, Swedish, Latin and others. The Dutch language of the end of the 18th century was different from the one of today and sometimes Shimon had difficulty in translating a certain word, saying that it was actually taken from German, but he made efforts to find the best translation of the text.
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