Professor

His charismatic face, marked with wrinkles, captivated me at the first sight. I captured his enthusiastic expression during a presentation at my mother’s fiftieth birthday celebration in May 2004. That’s how this iconic photo with the butterfly was created. He liked it, and so did the others. He always used it whenever someone asked him for a photograph in a book or magazine. And he wore that butterfly to all the departmental celebrations. Until he lost it one day. He replaced it with another, a wooden one. But it wasn’t the same. Just as it wasn’t the same when he eventually disappeared himself…

Pavel Brunovský (1934-2018), a Slovak mathematician of global significance, founder of the study program in economic and financial mathematics at Comenius University in Bratislava. His most significant contribution entered textbooks of control theory under the name Brunovský canonical form. He himself entered the hearts of dozens of his students and collaborators, who found him demanding and kind at the same time…