In memoriam - Prof. Dr. Sc. Asim Bilajbegović

Prof. Dr. Sc. Asim Bilajbegović passed away on 15 December 2020, at the age of 71 from complications caused by COVID19. He was born in Sanski Most, began his education in his hometown, graduated from the Geodetic Technical School in Sarajevo, studied geodesy at the Faculty of Geodesy, University of Zagreb, and received his doctorate from the University of Bonn in 1978, after which he returned to Zagreb. He was a longtime professor at the Faculty of Geodesy, where he was dean from 1985-1987.

He actively participated in the teaching of all three study programs as well as in research projects at the Department of Geodesy and Geoinformatics of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Sarajevo, during the last 20 years of his life.

He has published several textbooks in German, English and Croatian. He was one of the pioneers in the use of GPS technology in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. From 1994 until his retirement in 2015, he worked as a professor of geodesy at the Technical University of Dresden, maintaining continuous scientific cooperation with the University of Zagreb and the University of Sarajevo.

Professor Bilajbegović will be remembered by generations of students as a person of integrity, a person who lives and works on the principle of building their country with knowledge. The inevitable slight smile on his face during the lecture told the listeners that it was happiness to share knowledge. All students and colleagues testify that he did not save energy for each of his lectures, looked forward to questions, and wanted to bring geodetic theory and practice closer to each listener in a mathematically simple way. One of his sayings by which we will remember him is: “A good theorist is the best practitioner.” Grateful for the contribution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and regional geodesy, we pray for the eternal peace of his soul in another beautiful part of the Universe.