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Let me write a few sentences in Jan Zytkow's memoriam whom I knew from 1992. Let me also express my gratitude to him and his wife Malgosia and their children.

I conduct my research in Poland, the land where Jan was born and visited it very frequently, and particularly often lended his hand to Polish scientists, efficiently collaborating with them. I am probably the co-author of the last conference paper with Jan, since I have finished our paper after Jan's passing away. The paper is entitled "Discovery of diagnostic knowledge from multisensor data" and will be published and presented by me at SPIE 15th Annual International Symposium on Aerospace/Defense Sensing, Simulation and Controls in Orlando in April 2001. Jan wrote only an introductory part of the paper and put forward the main ideas. We e-mailed frequently and our last correspondence took place on 5 January, immediately before Jan was taken to hospital to undergo the surgery. In this last e-mail to me concerning the article he wrote [translated from Polish by WM] "Let me know what you are expecting from me. I will try to do as much as possible, particularly run the 49er and a new version of the 3-D Equation Finder. A new element contained in the abstract [of the paper] is a model built with taking advantage of multisensor data. Information provided by data from subsequent sensors supplements itself, but also repeats. I would not be afraid of this repetition and would try to build it into the model. 'Redundancy' implies 'reliability' and, in particular, better quality of diagnosis. I can try to think of a theory concerning this subject."

I am involved in applications of AI in engineering. Jan provided me the opportunity of long-term collaboration in this field. I have been given his invitation to visit him twice at the Universities where he already worked and two times I spent one-month periods collaborating with him in the States (in Wichita and in Charlotte). It is not very well known that Jan and his wife Malgosia simply invited many people and offered them their hospitality, that the visitors could just stay in the Zytkows' house taking advantage of the family atmosphere and easily conduct the research. I know several professors from Poland who, thanks to the Zytkows' hospitality, were able to achieve valuable results while staying in the USA, and could fully focus their attention on the research.

In December 2000 Jan and Malgosia Zytkow had their last visit to Poland. Jan held many lectures at different universities there. I had a great pleasure to participate at his 90-minute long lecture for computer science community including graduate students, held at the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy in Cracow. Jan was in a very good condition and had a lot of questions from the audience. The lecture was fantastic and I expressed my enthusiasm to Jan after that. Then on the same day he had next lecture at the oldest Polish university - Jagiellonian University in Cracow, for philosophy community. Later on, when he was in hospital in Charlotte after the surgery, I got an information that this intensive day in Cracow for Jan had begun from a visit of the ambulance called by his wife Malgosia at 4:00 AM. This especially strongly characterises Jan - he was indefatigable in spreading out his wisdom and knowledge.

Jan has planned with me a scientific long-term grant on diagnostic knowledge discovery from multisensor data. He invited me for a six-month stay starting from August 2001. In his invitation letter he wrote, "Your visit will allow us to engage in serious long-term collaboration. (...) That, in my view, will lead to outstanding results, leading to a new and superior method for machine diagnostics. A major journal publication and several conference papers should summarize those results." Unfortunately, an accomplishment of these plans with Jan is no longer possible.

At the end, I would like to say a few words to Jan: Jan, I want to express my deepest gratitude for several years of scientific collaboration on the research on applications of DM and KDD methods to the diagnostics of machinery. This reffers to you and your wife Malgosia Zytkow, and also to your children, since all your family provided the opportunity of easy cooperation with you, Jan.

Wojtek

Wojciech A. Moczulski, Ph.D., D.Sc. (Mech. Eng.) Professor, Department of Machine Design Fundamentals Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Silesian University of Technology at Gliwice, Poland e-mail: moczulsk@polsl.gliwice.pl http://www.polsl.gliwice.pl/~moczulsk