Joe Diestel - The Celebration of his Life
As a well respected academic with an enthusiastic style of teaching, Joe Diestel specialised in Banach space and measure theory and held a keen interest in his work, students and writing. In honour of his life and in memory of this mathematic legacy it is fitting that the most recent issue of Quaestiones Mathematicae is a special issue that celebrates Joe Diestel's life (1943-2017).
Guest Edited by Guillermo Curbera, Patrick (Paddy) Dowling and Jan Fourie this particular special issue contains papers fitting to Joe Diestel's work. "We as guest editors are very thankful for the quality papers that were submitted to be published in this special issue of Quaestiones Mathematicae (QM). The papers went through the usual high standard refereeing process of the journal and internationally acclaimed experts were willing to act as referees. We thankfully acknowledge the outstanding contributions of both authors and referees in order to publish an issue of QM in honour of Joe Diestel, which we can be proud of."
Diestel's books, publications and excellent networking meant he made lasting, distinctive contributions to mathematics in general and to functional analysis in particular. In a tribute to Joe, from his family, it is mentioned that "Joe traveled the globe as a mathematical adventurer” and that “he was especially fond of his times spent in Ireland, Venezuela and South Africa”.
Diestel served as a member of the journal’s Editorial Board for almost 26 years uninterruptedly beginning from January 1992. Professor Koos Grobler was the Editor of QM at the time of Joe’s appointment on the Editorial Board. As she put it: “During all these years Joe has marketed the journal enthusiastically and successfully amongst functional analysts. He recruited high quality contributions in the fields of functional analysis and the theory of vector measures, which attracted much attention to QM and led to a regular supply of quality papers in these fields over the years." Together with his South African co-workers, Jan Fourie and Johan Swart, Joe published a series of papers in QM on Grothendieck’s workon tensor products of normed spaces, which attracted much international attention and which culminated in the publication of a book.
The editorial note in this Special Issue was compiled by the guest editors, and is made up of contributions by some others who enthusiastically agreed to briefly share their views on Joe’s mathematical legacy from their personal experience.
The Editor-in-Chief of Quaestiones Mathematicae, Themba Dube, notes that since its inception the journal has always positioned itself as an international journal that publishes papers of a high quality. "This we have achieved through the hard work and dedication of the editorial board.The growth of QM has over the years necessitated that we increase not only the editorial board but also the number of issues we publish per year."
The journal continues to be among the first-choice journals for international scholars with a great deal of attention via article downloads. The journal has also received an outstanding impact factor of 1.049 this year and continues to grow. The special issue, Volume 43, Issue 5-6, is available to read at no charge until the end of September here.