Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire

Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry.

Friday, July 3, 2015

Mujid Kazimi Mujid Kazimi, leading educator and researcher in nuclear technology, dies at 67

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Dear Alumni/ae and Friends of NSE,

I am sorry to have to write to you with extremely sad news. Professor Mujid Kazimi suffered a heart attack while traveling in China two days ago and has passed away. He was visiting Harbin Engineering University at the time, as a member of an international advisory committee.

Almost all of you knew Mujid and will know what a tremendous loss this is. As President Reif noted in his letter informing the MIT community of the news this morning, “since joining our faculty 39 years ago, [Professor Kazimi] has been a wonderful presence on campus, a thoughtful teacher, dedicated mentor, and brilliant engineer who devoted his life to making nuclear power safer and more economic for societies around the world.”

While the international community knew Mujid as one of the world’s great nuclear engineers, in NSE we also knew him as a wonderful human being. Wise, kind, tough when he needed to be, but always gracious and respectful toward his students and his colleagues — he was a good man, and a true gentleman. His dedication and loyalty to his students, and to the Department, were inspirational. This is a huge and painful loss for our department, for MIT, and for the field of nuclear energy. But in NSE we are also grateful for the privilege of having known and worked with Mujid. I have no doubt that our colleagues in Mechanical Engineering, where he was also a faculty member, feel similarly.

To contemplate Mujid’s accomplishments, you can read the obituary here.

We will let you know as soon as information about the memorial arrangements becomes available. In the meantime, for anyone who may want to write to Mujid’s wife Nazik, her home address is 16 Manemet Road, Newton MA 02459. Or, if you prefer, please feel free to write to me and I will forward your message to her.

This is a very difficult time. Mujid is irreplaceable, and the void he leaves will not be filled. But, as you would expect — and as Mujid himself would certainly have done in his quietly effective way — the faculty, staff and students in the Department are rallying around. Although this is a devastating blow, we will recover. And if you want to understand why we will recover, a big part of the answer is the myriad of actions to strengthen the fabric of the Department that Mujid himself engineered over nearly 40 years of dedicated service on our faculty. That, and his remarkable network of talented and successful alums, and, of course, his wonderful family, are his lasting legacies. And so, as we mourn Mujid, we should also celebrate his life, and the fact that we had the honor of being part of it.

Sincerely,

-- Richard
 

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