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Obituary – Árpád Lajos Scholtz (1947-2025)

Telecommunications / News / Obituary – Árpád Lajos Scholtz (1947-2025)
15. April 2025
Árpád was born on January 19, 1947 in Kecskemét, Hungary.
In the course of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, Árpád's family fled Hungary and settled in Oberwart in southern Burgenland.

After attending the Höhere Technische Lehranstalt in Mödling, he began studying electrical engineering/communications engineering at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien),
which he completed in 1973 with his diploma thesis on the construction of two stable CO2-Lasers.
Árpád Lajos Scholtz (1947-2025)

As a research associate at the Institute for Radio Frequency Engineering and Communications Engineering, he subsequently made essential contributions to a large number of projects of the European Space Agency (ESA). These led to his dissertation „Breitbandige Auskoppelmodulation von CO2 Lasern“ in 1976 and later to his habilitation thesis on internal modulation of Lasers in 1982.in the working group on optical space communication, his contributions enabled a large number of publications in the field of modulation, coherent reception and antenna arrays for laser radiation, documenting a broad international recognition.

His second scientific mainstay was radio-frequency circuit technology, which he brought to peak performance in collaboration with global corporations such as Infineon and BMW. In 2008, who else, other than Árpád, had actually investigated semiconductor circuits with 100 GHz bandwidth?

Árpád was a physicist with a strong analytical mindset and clear expectations of himself and others.Science was his life, amateur radio on shortwave his passion. Already as a teenager he passed the amateur radio exam in 1963 and was assigned the call sign OE4SZW, later OE1SZW. In 1983, he founded the Radio Amateur Club of the TU Wien with the callsign OE1XTU, in which he was active until the end. We all knew him as straightforward, independent – often stubborn. He said what he thought and consistently went his own way to the end – both professionally and personally.

Conventions were of little interest to Árpád, but all the more for self-determination.

His helpfulness as a friend, colleague and mentor was proverbial. If there was a problem at the institute with lasers or antennas, Árpád was always ready to help. He often saved an experiment, when it threatened fail. Árpád was also a wonderful teacher who shared his knowledge enthusiastically, rich in anecdotes with a subtle sense of humour and a punchy diction.

One event during the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, when all telephone connections to and from Bosnia were cut and hundreds of thousands of refugees had to make their way is indicative of Árpád’s character. For months, he and Boris Nemšić kept in touch every night with radio operators in Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially Sarajevo, and all over the world. In times when families were torn apart and there was no way to get any news about the whereabouts of family members, the connection via the radio station of the TU Wien he set up was vital for the survival of many people!

Christoph Mecklenbräuker,

Ernst Bonek,

and Walter Leeb

on behalf of Árpád’s mourning companions.

Nachruf_Arpad_Scholtz PDF229.61 KB

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