Jarkowi Strzałko - In Memoriam
Jarek Strzałko was born on September 21, 1945 in Łódź, died on January 21, 2017 in Marianów Sierakowski. He has been associated with the Department of Machine Dynamics for the last ten years (2007–2017). He had over 50 years of experience at the Lodz University of Technology and the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, including the studies he started in 1963. Fascinated by mechanics, he worked scientifically even during a serious illness: he supplemented the book with new examples of tasks and had fun solving them - the effects are visible in the script Basics of Analytical Mechanics, he was interested in the classes and progress of younger colleagues from the Department - he browsed their latest publications on the Internet.
Before joining the group of employees of the Department of Machine Dynamics, he was at the Department of General Mechanics, where he started working as an assistant (1969) and continued after obtaining his doctorate (1975) as an assistant professor, until his habilitation (2000). It was a time when he intensively deepened his knowledge, collected and studied monographs on mechanics (he left a rich collection of literature published in the second half of the 20th century). He spent many hours at work, sometimes, to relax, he played chess games with his colleagues or a ping-pong match (once in the A22 building there was a game table in the basement). Partners knew he didn't like to lose.
He acquired skills in solving mechanical problems while working on a set of problems published before World War II by Z. Straszewicz, about which prof. Jerzy Leyko said: "easy, they are not". This is how the unique script of Tasks from selected mechanics issues was created. From around 1980 he became interested in programming. It was the time of the first microcomputers: 8-bit Meritum, Sinclair Spectrum ZX, then the first PC with a 10MB hard drive. It became possible to use such equipment for calculations, to use it in the laboratory (as well as to play snake, and later also chess). Interest in computer methods in mechanics, e.g. the finite element method, was growing - his first publication on this subject was in 1983.
The 1990s bring a series of works on the analysis of the movement and stability of mobile cranes. They were already created using the Mathematica system, which became his new hobby. The issue of assessing the correctness of solutions, numerical equations of dynamics, for various types of models of mechanical systems was the subject of Jarek's habilitation thesis. He prepared it in the late 1990s, but illness forced him to postpone his habilitation colloquium for almost two years.
In the years 2003-2007 he worked at the Department of Production Systems, where the Department of Analytical Mechanics was established, which he headed. It was the time of creating a new mechanics laboratory and preparing scripts: Laboratory exercises in mechanics - for the master's course, Materials for exercises in mechanics, Lectures in general mechanics. It is worth mentioning that when developing them, he widely used his talent for programming - the tasks contained in these materials were generated, drawn and solved automatically in the Mathematica system.
Work at the Department of Machine Dynamics is the last period of his work at the Lodz University of Technology, a fruitful period of an already outstanding specialist in the field of classical mechanics, using modern computational tools. The result of cooperation with the team of prof. T. Kapitaniak were important publications on coin tossing, dice (e.g. Dynamics of coin tossing is predictable, Understanding Coin Tossing, Can the dice be fair by dynamics?, Les dés sont pipés) and a monograph (Dynamics of Gambling: Origins of Randomness in Mechanical Systems), in which, among other things, roulette dynamics were analysed.
Jarek treated teaching very seriously and prepared himself thoroughly for classes. He fulfilled all obligations and contracts in the same way. Competent, demanding, sometimes principled, sometimes he softened - e.g. when assessing the exam work, he said "very, very, very poorly" and scored a three.
One of his former students - prof. K. Czołczynski said - He was a Great Teacher.
I addressed him as MASTER.
He mistakenly thought it was a joke...
For me, he was also a Master, and moreover, a long-time Collaborator and Friend.
Julek Grabski