Lior Tzafriri, Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, died Sunday morning after undergoing heart surgery. Lior had recovered from surgery he underwent in the autumn. He was leading a normal life, going out, frequently coming to the Institute of Mathematics, and was as well humored as usual.

Those who knew Lior will miss not only his sharp mathematical insights but his enormous sense of humor, true wisdom, and his gentle behavior that was so surprising for a person with such a strong personality and independence of mind.

Lior's funeral will take place 12:00 Tuesday, February 26, at Bet Hahesped,

We are very sorry to announce that Professor Lior Tzafriri passed away on February 24, 2008. He died in Jerusalem during an open heart surgery for replacement of a valve in his heart.

Lior was born on May 9, 1936 in Bucharest and emigrated to Israel in 1961. He started his university studies in Bucharest but did his PhD in Jerusalem on the subject of spectral operators. He was on the faculty of the Hebrew University since 1970, as a full professor since 1978. He was a visiting professor in several universities, including Northwestern University, University of Minnesota, California Institute of Technology, Cambridge University, University of Copenhagen, IHES, Ohio State University and Texas A&M.

Most of his research work was in Banach space theory. Here are some of his contributions to the subject:

1. The solution of the complemented subspaces problem (with J. Lindenstrauss).

2. The structure theory of Orlicz sequence spaces (with J. Lindenstrauss).

3. Spaces with unique unconditional bases up to permutation (with J. Bourgain, P. Casazza and J. Lindenstrauss).

4. The textbooks: Classical Banach Spaces I, II (with J. Lindenstrauss).

5. The 0-2 law (with Y. Katznelson).

6. The structure of Banach spaces with a symmetric structure (with W. B. Johnson, B. Maurey and G. Schechtman).

7. Invertibility of large submatrices (with J. Bourgain).

8. The structure of finite dimensional subspaces of Lp (with J. Bourgain).

9. Work on the Kadison Singer problem (with J. Bourgain).

Lior Tzafriri did an outstanding job as the chairman of the Mathematics Department of the Hebrew University during his two separate terms.

Those who knew Lior will miss not only his sharp mathematical insights but his enormous sense of humor, true wisdom, and his gentle behavior that was so surprising for a person with such a strong personality and independence of mind.

Lior is survived by Marianna, his wife of 51 years; his daughter Edna; his son Rami; and three grandchildren.

(Sent by Bill Johnson)