Konechy, Gottfried

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1985
GOTTFRIED KONECNY
to be Doctor of Science

Like Dr. Deslongchamps, Gottfried Konecny is no stranger to our University. Born in Czechoslovakia, and educated in Germany and the United States — he holds advanced degrees from the Technical University of Munich and from Ohio State University – he came to the University of New Brunswick in 1959 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering. Since 1971 he has been Professor of Photogrammetry and Director of the Institute for Photogrammetry in the University of Hannover, in the Federal Republic of Germany. In the intervening years, his excellence in his discipline and his dedication to his craft have taken him from India to Ellesmere Island, from Leningrad to Australia, to China, Taiwan, Argentina and Mexico, and from Mount Kennedy to Kuwait. Over the years, his capacity for hard work and exciting visions has made him the President, or Congress Director, or Secretary General of many international organizations devoted to the care and well being of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, and Surveying.

He has covered and literally measured much of the world, but as if this were not enough he ventured into space in 1966-67, when he worked with NASA in the development of analytical photogrammetric methods to prepare for the landing on the moon. The President Emeritus of UNB has written of a formal letter from NASA which states that the efforts of this man whom we honour today "were the key to shortening by several months the time for organizing the successful first walk by man on the moon."

Distinguished as these events are in this scientist's remarkable career, it is not for them alone that we make him a Doctor of Science in our University. By this symbolic action, we seek to express our gratitude to the young Assistant Professor who dreamed of a Department of Surveying Engineering, and who founded this outstanding department, the first in North America and a model for future educators in this field.

The genesis of the new department was perhaps auspicious, for it was conceived on a train bound for Ottawa in 1959. Four men were going to attend the first "Colloquium on Survey Education": Wlllis Roberts, Surveyor for the Province of New Brunswick; Bill Hilborn, Photogrammetry man from the Faculty of Forestry; Ira Beattie, Head of the Civil Engineering Department; and a brand new Assistant Professor in whose mind the occasion remains vivid to this day. The men shared a compartment and if you can remember the trains of yesteryear, there were only three proper seats; the fourth man had to perch on an essential but inelegant object in the corner. When you got up to refresh your drink--it was rum on the way from the Maritimes--you lost your proper seat and had to take what was left. On the way back from the Colloquium things were a bit more civilized — there were only two men and the drink was scotch. Ira Beattie and Gottfried Konecny sat up all night and arrived in Fredericton with a plan for what was to become the Department of Surveying Engineering. With the blessings of the Department of Civil Engineering; Jim Dineen, Dean of Engineering; and Colin Mackay, President, the new Division of Surveying Engineering was born in 1962.

The present Chairman of the Department has written that "in just twelve years, Gottfried translated an idea into a department that ranks with the best on the campus and with the best in its discipline world-wide." We join today with Augus Hamilton to thank you for your dreams, your drive, and your dedication; the University is your debtor.

Insignissime Praeges, tota Universitas, praesento vobis Godefridum Konecny ur admittatur honoris causa ad gradum Doctoris in Scientia in hac Universitate.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2