Dear XXX,
Thanks for your reply!
Dr. Fang had an Arizona valley fever last year,
which caused him lose a lot of weights. This disease is
caused by underground bacteria coming out to the
surface due to the overuse of underground
water at Arizona. There is no effective cure for
this disease since it is only limited to
people at Arizona area and the medical company or
government does not want (since it
may not produce profit for private companies) or
does not have funds (government) to
fund the medicine research. Dr. Fang had a major
surgery last fall and was getting full recovery early this
spring. He was planning to go to the university
to teach on Apr. 6th when he fell to his chair
suddenly and passed away. He was in fact on skype
with one of his collaborators in China.
Dr. Fang has been quite productive in his
research. He published 3-10 refereed papers in
the best astrophysical journals per year since he
joined Arizona in 1991. This is a quite productive
record in astronomy.
He is survived by his wife, Prof. Li Shuxian, his old son,
Fang Ke, and his family members (wife and two sons).
Over 200 people, including many of his former
students (and two professors from China), attended his
funeral. A website is dedicated to Dr. Fang Lizhi
at http://www.forevermissed.com/li-zhi-fang/.
You may see some writeup there.
I worked with him during my first year at Arizona
and published two papers with him.
We realized that the universe with a Lambda
parameter (now called dark energy) fits the
observed hydrogen clouds better at distant
universe using our early universe simulations
in 1993, more than five years earlier than the
discovery of the acceleration of the universe in
1998 which won Nobel price this year.
It is quite unfortunate that my science interest
was shifted to observational cosmology,
and later to astronomy instrumentation and technology and exoplanets
and did not pursue more along the
early universe simulation studies with Dr. Fang.
In memory of Dr. Fang, I may go back to carry out
further study of measuring the expansion of the universe
using a new technique developed by me and my team
members over the years. Although
there are many indirect evidence to show that the
universe is expanding, there is no direct
evidence to show that the universe is really moving.
Best regards,