Prof. Dr h. c. Gerecke left us on 28 April 1983, just one month before his 85th birthday.
He finished his studies in 1922 at the Polytechnical Institute of Technology (ETH) of Zurich. For 30 years he was active in industry where he developed, along with other accomplishments, mercury arc rectifiers without pumps. In 1952 he became professor at the ETH, for electrotechnology, industrial electronics and automatic control. In 1956 he founded the Swiss Federation for Automatic Control; he was for many years president of IFAC. In 1956 he also took part in the Congress of Heidelberg, where the creation of I FAC was planned.
In 1957 he attended the founding meeting of IFAC in Paris and became its first treasurer. The same year he also was appointed as vice-president of the International Federation for Analog Computing. In 1960, at the First IFAC Congress in Moscow, he was elected vice-president of IFAC, and two years later he was elected IFAC president. In this capacity, he organized and chaired the Second IFAC Congress held in 1963 in Basle, which was a great success. He contributed considerably to creating the final organization and structure oflFAC. In 1962 he