All his friends in the Combustion Institute and in the International Colloquium on Dynamics of Explosions and Reactive Systems (I. C. D. E. R. S.), of which he was one of the creators, will be saddened to learn of the death of Numa Manson on the llth of February, 1993. Numa was born in Ekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk in the Soviet period) in Russia. He came to Paris in 1926, where he obtained a Licence of Sciences in 1934 and a Welding Technician Diploma. He became a French citizen in 1937, fought on the French front during the war, and was taken prisoner. Liberated in 1941, he held various postgraduate positions in different schools and institutes in Paris, whilst pursuing research under the direction of academician G. Ribaud. His thesis, in 1946, was on the propagation of deflagrations and of detonations, and he became the Head of a team studying reaction engines at I. F. P., whilst giving lectures at the University of Paris. In 1954 he became a Professor at the University of Poitiers and E. N. S. M. A., where he gave an original course on Applied Thermodynamics and Combustion. He founded the Laboratory of Detonics and Energetics of E. N. S. M. A., the activity and reputation of which grew steadily. It became associated with C. N. R. S. in 1968 and reached a complement of seventy. In 1966 he was elected Dean of the University of Poitiers and received an Award from the Academy of Sciences in 1971. In 1967, along with Professors Oppenheim (Berkeley) and Soloukhin (Minsk), he founded the I. C. D. E. R. S. A year later his University of Poitiers organised the Twelfth Symposium (International) on Combustion--a memorable event for the 700 attendees, as it retained something of the flavour of the earlier events of "May 68."
In 1972, despite severe health problems, Numa Manson was chairing the Thermo-Energetics Section of the National Committee, the French Section of the Combustion Institute, and the National Society of the "Docteurs es Sciences." In this connection he could never agree that the previous "Doctorat d'Etat" could be replaced by the shorter "Doctorate d' Universite." He has driven sixty doctorates, whilst his own scientific contribution, especially in the field of detonics-combustion, resides in 150 publications and books, the last of which was prepared for the forthcoming Fourteenth I. C. D. E. R. S. meeting, to be held this summer.