In memoriam: Henri Kampunzu (1952–2004)

✍ Scribed by Sospeter Muhongo; Jean-Paul Liegeois; Steve McCourt; Sadrack Felix Toteu; Estella Atekwana; Patrick G. Eriksson; Marek Wendorff

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 128 KB
• Volume: 40
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1464-343X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jafrearsci.2005.02.001

✦ Synopsis

lost his battle with leukemia and passed away on Tuesday, 29 November 2004 at the Midrand Park Hospital in Johannesburg (South Africa) and was laid to eternal peace on Monday, 6th December 2004 in his home country, in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC). He was a well-known and greatly acknowledged trilingual African geoscientist. Some argue that he was the best known and the greatest African geologist of our time. Henri participated in more than a hundred international geological conferences on four major continents (i.e. Africa, America, Asia and Europe), and organized more than twenty international geological conferences in Africa and Europe. He was invited as a keynote speaker to more than forty major international conferences.

Henri Kampunzu was a true son of Africa and an outstanding African geoscientist who made an immediate and lasting impression on everyone he met. This was true of everyone, from young students to senior professors of geology. He was also a genuine friend and we will miss him far more than we are able to say in these few words. Steve recalls having first met Henri Kampunzu in Johannesburg in 1996. The occasion was a preliminary meeting to discuss the Kaapvaal craton seismic project in which he would eventually play such a large part. His last meeting with Henri was also in Johannesburg-at Geoscience Africa in early July 2004. Over the intervening 10 years, Steve remembers happy times spent together at conferences and field trips in various parts of the world but particularly in Africa; unfortunately, he was never able to visit HenriÕs home country and will always regret not having the opportunity to experience first-hand the geology and the country about which Henri was so passionate.

Henri was born in Bukavu town (eastern DRC) on 27 November 1952. He was the second of six children in his family. He began his primary education in 1958 and proceeded with secondary education (1964) at the Athe ´ne ´e de Bagira in the same hometown. Besides other general secondary school subjects, this school specialized in biology and chemistry. Thus, it seems that this school correctly predicted his scientific future at that tender age. Henri ended up being an excellent geochemist and petrologist of undoubted international repute. We vividly recall his moving seminal lectures which were characterized by discrimination diagrams and geodynamic models based on abundant and unequivocal chemical and isotope data. Henri joined the ''Ecole des Mines'' (ENM) in 1970 to attend a pre-university training in geosciences. Later on he joined the University of Lubumbashi (DRC) and passed with a ''high distinction'' for his MSc degree in geology (''licence'' in geology). He obtained a ''highest distinction'' for his PhD in petrology from the same university in 1981. Henri began his university career at the University of Lubumbashi as an assistant and rose quickly up the ladder to professor in 1983. He spent two short spells during his academic career at the University of Aix-Marseilles III (France) as a visiting professor (1981-1983 and 1986-1988), and from 1996 to the time of his demise, was a professor at the University of Botswana. At the University of Botswana, Henri was asked to coordinate a national team of geoscientists participating in a longterm international research project on the Kaapvaal Craton. His dynamic leadership resulted in an impressive number of papers on various aspects of the Kaapvaal Craton in Botswana, a very good conference on the Project held in Gaborone in 1999, and two MSc projects and one PhD conducted by Botswana postgraduate students.