On 1 October, we bid farewell to our esteemed colleague Franz Sachslehner on his well-deserved retirement. His farewell lecture on "The poetry of physical-historical objects - selected experiments" took place on 27 September.

Franz began his studies at the Faculty of Physics in 1977, has been a member of staff since 1982 and an assistant professor since 1996. He has worked for the PNM group and has been group speaker and deputy group speaker of the working group “Basic Experimental Physics Training and University Didactics” from 2007 to 2022.

He made substantial scientific contributions to electron scattering on lattice defects in solids as well as in the fields of electronic transport properties of metals and alloys – especially low-field Hall coefficient, electrical measurement of dislocation densities – deviations from Matthiessen’s rule, and measurement of true low-field Hall effect of  pure and dislocated noble metals by DC-SQUID-voltmeters.

Another focus of interest was the history of physics. Franz helped in establishing and maintaining a collection of historical instruments at the Faculty of Physics. From 2020 to 2022, he was head of the section History of Physics at the Austrian Physical Society.

Furthermore, he made a major contribution to the faculty administration over many years, he was responsible for the liquid nitrogen supplies, supervised numerous bachelor's, master's and doctoral theses, and held lab courses and lectures.

We thank Franz for his tireless efforts and wish him all the best for his retirement!