Professor Neno Penchev Dimov (1935-2001)

     Professor Neno Penchev Dimov was born in 1935 in Rousse, Bulgaria. He studied at the Faculty of Industrial Chemistry at the Technical University in Sofia and in 1960 graduated with the diploma of chemical engineer. In 1968 he was granted a PhD degree by the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and in 1987 the same institute granted him an honorary doctorate. From 1974 he held the post of Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Bourgas, and became a full professor in 1989. Although in Bourgas Professor Dimov taught organic analytical chemistry, his main employer was the Research Chemical-Pharmaceutical Institute (NIHFI) in Sofia where, as long ago as 1976, he started organizing a laboratory for high-performance liquid chromatography.

     Professor Neno Dimov was indisputably a leading figure among Bulgarian separation scientists and chromatographers, and, to a large extent, was a pioneer of these techniques in his country. He was author of more than 120 research papers and, despite considerable difficulty keeping in touch with world science throughout most of his life, he published in the top international journals in his field (e.g. Journal of Chromatography, Chromatographia, Journal of Biomedical Chromatography, and Analytica Chimica Acta). He also willingly attended many international conferences and symposia and acted as a member of the Editorial Boards for the journals Chemistry and Industry, Bulgarian Chemical Commu-nications, and Acta Chromatographica.

     Both in the laboratory and socially Neno Dimov was a charming and friendly man of great warmth, a very easy-going and likeable figure who will be missed with great sadness by the international community of chromatographers, especially the Editorial Board of 'Acta Chromatographica', of which he was a well-loved member. We express our deepest sympathies to his family.

The Editors