A portrait to celebrate a professor's 60th birthday has been a tradition at the Department of Physics at Åbo Akademi University for some time. My portrait was unveiled on 27 January 2006, a few weeks before the birthday.
The artist is Heli Kurunsaari. She appeared in Turku at the same time as I did, 1994-95. Since then she has been remarkably active, with many highly praised exhibitons on her CV. Her technique of choice is woodcut with oilcolors using a sacrificial plate. To our knowledge, the technique has not been used for official portraits before.
Heli Kurunsaari's pictures of people often include various objects and features to describe the person. This is a key point in the present work: It is not only a personal portrait but rather a picture of a professor, including the ingredients and tasks of the profession: The focus and objects of the research, the abstract or symbolic way of scientific approach, and - most importantly - the students being the focus of the teaching and education. These things can be seen in the portrait.
My work has been concerned with materials, primarily such with exciting electrical properties. I have devoted myself to "close-to-life" topics such as crystal growth and organic materials, especially polymers. This appears in microscopic form in the background: The growth steps on cubic crystal surfaces and the Maltese cross figures of crystalline polymers. The colours reflect artistic freedom!
Formulae symbolise the abstract thinking in physics. Somewhat simplifying, I have survived with a single formula, the one for electrical conductivity, δ = n e µ. The symbols for the concentration of charge carriers, e.g. electrons n, and their mobility µ, which here look so pure and innocent, can bear within them a multitude of dependencies on other properties.
Someone may find the look of the students grotesque, but let us rather consider it intense: Faces concentrated on forthcoming endeavours or happy with achieved results.
In my opinion the portrait is fantastic! My thanks go to Heli Kurunsaari, who put in a lot of work and efforts. The picture hangs in the Gadolinia building where it really brightens up the Main Auditory.
Finally, I express my sincere thanks to all of them who have made the portrait a reality, especially the staff at the Department of Physics who initiated the project, but many more have helped to carry it through.
Henrik Stubb