Scientometrics - Obituary: Tibor Braun (1932 - 2022)

Professor Dr. Tibor Braun, founder and honorary editor-in-chief of Scientometrics and Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, passed away on 27 September 2022. He was professor emeritus of the Institute of Chemistry of Eötvös Loránd University and honorary member of the Romanian Academy of Sciences.

With his death, information science and scientometrics has lost one of its pioneers and best leaders. He has truly shaped a discipline and served its scientific community for five decades. Tibor was also a prominent researcher and teacher in the field of analytical chemistry and thus he proved to be one of true, outstanding and renowned polymaths of the last century. He was bestowed the George Hevesy Medal Award, the premier international award of excellence in radioanalytical and nuclear chemistry, and the Derek de Solla Price Medal for outstanding contributions to the fields of quantitative studies of science. By combining the two fields, chemistry and information science, he significantly contributed to the development of scientometrics to a research field on a scientific basis. Without this, scientometrics, as we know it today, would be unimaginable.

Tibor systematically contributed to the institutionalisation of scientometrics, by transforming an invisible college into a visible one. He launched one of the first institutes devoted to the field of scientometrics world-wide: The Information Science and Scientometrics Research Unit (ISSRU) in Budapest and he founded the international scientific journal “Scientometrics” in the late 1970s as its former Editor-in-Chief and served as Honorary Editor of the journal afterwards until present. He also conceived and launched the Derek de Solla Price Memorial Medal in the 1980s.

We had the privilege of working under Tibor’s supervision and as colleagues and co-authors for decades. We have jointly co-edited the journal Scientometrics with him over many years. We will greatly miss an excellent teacher, colleague, and true friend.

A commemoration of his academic life and work is scheduled for one of the following volumes of the journal Scientometrics.

Wolfgang Glänzel

András Schubert