4:23 AM, 26 Jul 2023

 

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Ask for my testimony for blog of memory of Ellis Gartner

Hello Gartner family,

I was so shocked and deeply sad to get the bad news last month. And I apologize to not be able to participate the ceremony.

As PhD student at Lafarge, I have passed three wonderful years with Ellis Gartner. Without him, I would have never entered into cement industry. His knowledge, intelligence, curiosity and patience as my thesis supervisor as well as his humor, passion to birds and empathies to the others in the life, will be always the reference of my professional and private life. All the memories of having delicious Japanese food in your house, hiking in the mountain around Lyon, feeding your birds 'vio' and 'lin', etc, will always stay in my brain.

I got the new year wish from him in December and I proposed him to see each other in German. However, he suddenly passed always. Even I was not able to come but I will be always the friend of your family. I will let you know when I will be Lyon next time.

Best regards

Jia Wang

Thank you, Ellis !

Dear Ellis,

I have the pleasure and the honour to work with you at LCR during 3 years.

Your passion for science, as your ability to mentor and develop others, were two sides of you that I always admired, the same way that I particularly enjoyed you very English sense of humour.

This sense of humour was a great contribution to the team. The same way that, being the only non-native French speakers in the team, we tried to drive the EdD to conduct the meetings in English. We never won that battle, but we made tremendous progress.

And as all my memories of you bring that humour component within, I've chosen this picture of an enjoyable evening where a group of friends gather to thank you and wish you all the best in a new phase of your life. 

​

Ellis, Thanks for those memories, that I will cherish forever.

And as I believe that from here in Argentina, I won't have a chance to do it personally, let me express my deepest condolences to your family. Even in pain, they have, as we all, many reasons to be proud of you.

Carlos Espina

Ellis, an eminent scientist...

I hope that Noriko will not mind if I share with Ellis’ friends, in this memorial blog, the letter that I sent to her on Monday, February 19. Allow me to attach to it a souvenir, an old picture taken during a 2008 trip to Japan, visiting then our colleagues from Taiheiyo Cement Company.

 

Chère Madame,

 

Hier, dans l’après-midi, j’ai appris par Danielle Sorrentino, la bouleversante nouvelle du décès de votre époux. J’ai du mal à y croire et, comme certainement vous-même et tous vos proches, d’accepter que Ellis ne sera plus là…

 

Ancien Directeur scientifique du Groupe Lafarge, j’ai beaucoup interagi avec Ellis jusqu’à ma retraite fin 2009. Nous avons fait des voyages lointains ensemble (ex. Japon, Etats-Unis) et participé à de nombreuses conférences scientifiques internationales. Ellis m’a toujours impressionné par sa passion pour la science, par ses très larges connaissances dans le domaine de chimie des matériaux cimentaires et, de manière générale, par sa capacité d’analyse et des propositions originales. Ses publications font référence et sont aujourd’hui abondamment citées. C’était l’un des meilleurs chercheurs du Laboratoire de Lafarge et c’est notamment grâce à Ellis que LCR connaît aujourd’hui un succès certain et est reconnu non seulement dans le monde industriel mais aussi dans le monde académique international.

 

Perdre son mari, et pour les enfants perdre leur père, est une épreuve très douloureuse, d’autant plus que la mort nous surprend de manière si inattendue. Cette épreuve demande à toute la famille énormément de courage; il y a peu de mots qui réconfortent. Que puis-je dire d’autre que de vous assurer que mes pensées sont avec vous et avec vos proches dans ces moments tellement difficiles ?

 

Recevez, chère Madame, l’expression de mes sincères condoléances et de toute ma sympathie.

 

Jacques Lukasik

 

 

 

Thank you for the intense and beautiful ceremony

Dear  Noriko, Maya, Yuma and Abi,

I wanted to thank you very much for the intense tribute you prepared for Ellis.

Everything was so well thought and beautiful!

It was really at the level of the image we keep from Ellis, full of delicacy, aesthetics and love.

I will never listen "bridge over trouble water" without thinking of you, Abi.

If by any action I could bring some warm to your pain, I would be very honored.

With all my warm regards,

Martin

Ellis, we will miss you

Ellis, is was such a pleasure to discuss with you, that it be for the width of your scientific culture,  the humor you brought in everything, your detailed views on political / social / cross-cultural questions.

As many, I was imagining that I would have plenty occasions to see you again, and that you would have a long time to go on exploring, discovering.

For me, Ellis was the combination of such a bright mind and a nice guy. All my sympathy to his family, I was so sorry not to be able to attend to the commemoration.

We will miss you Ellis.

Hélène Lombois-Burger

A great scientist, teacher and friend

Dear Noriko, Maya, Yuma and Abi,

 

Like others, I am absolutely shocked and saddened by the news. The last time I spoke with Ellis was just before Christmas when we discussed a paper we were working on and the PhD projects that we were going to supervise. Ellis also shared his long holiday plans. We were supposed to meet again last week. He was full of life. But life is so fragile and unpredictable.

 

It was a great privilege to have known Ellis for over fifteen years, first from his excellent scientific work, and then as prominent member of Nanocem and in recent years as visiting professor and colleague at Imperial College London. I had such a great time working with him. He gave very well attended lectures and co-supervised research students at Imperial. He was a dedicated teacher and very popular with students. They appreciated his friendly and relaxed manner, his vast knowledge and experience. I also thought that Ellis enjoyed interacting with students and the contributions he made at Imperial.

 

I will always treasure the long lunches and coffee breaks I had with Ellis. Of course we talked about science, the experiments we were going to do to test his new C-S-H theory and MgO cements. But we always digressed to other interesting things. I will miss his great sense of humour and pragmatic view of the world. I will also miss his warmth and generosity. His willingness to share knowledge and time. His honest views and frank assessments. Beyond scientific pursuits, he loved travelling and had a great passion for music. I know he was very happy to be able to travel more during retirement and to spend quality time with family. Through our many conversations, I also caught glimpses of a man who was entirely caring, affectionate and devoted to his family, and extremely proud of his children’s achievements.  

 

I will always value the time I spent with Ellis. He was an exceptional man, a brilliant scientist and a thoroughly nice guy. Ellis was an inspiration to many of us, a great mentor to many younger scientists like myself. He will be sorely missed.

 

My thoughts and condolences are with you and everyone who knew him.

 

Hong S Wong

Imperial College London