The Darwin community is saddened to learn of the death of Professor Ekhard Salje, who was a Fellow and valued member of the College community from 1986 until his appointment as President of Clare Hall in 2001. He was subsequently elected as an Honorary Fellow in 2002, in which capacity he maintained a close connection to Darwin.
Born in Germany in 1946, Professor Salje began his career at the University of Hanover, where he held the role of Head of Department at the Institute for Crystallography and Petrology, before his relocation to Cambridge in 1985. Over the course of a long and highly distinguished career he developed the field of Mineral Physics at Cambridge.
His research focused primarily on the stability of minerals and the transformation processes occurring within them.
Professor Salje served as Head of the Department of Earth Sciences for a decade, as well as chairing the Cambridge eScience Centre at the Cavendish Lab and overseeing collaboration with MIT as Programme Director of the Cambridge-MIT Institute.
His work received widespread international recognition. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, as well as of Germany’s Leopoldina and the Spanish Academia Royal, and Chevalier dans l’ordre des Palmes Academiques (France).
In 2007 Professor Salje was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and last December he received China’s highest civilian honour, the Friendship Medal.
We extend our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.
