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Randy Kobes passed away unexpectedly at the age of 54 on Saturday, September 18, 2010 after a short illness. He was a devoted parent who put his children before all else, an outstanding physicist, a dedicated teacher and a talented University administrator. Throughout his life Randy worked tirelessly, selflessly and with great effect to benefit those around him.  He will be greatly missed by his family, Lise, Jonathan, Lianne, Sarah and Emilie, and by his friends and colleagues worldwide.

Randy obtained a B.Eng. in Engineering Physics from the University of Saskatchewan in 1978, and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Alberta in 1983. He held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of British Columbia and at Memorial University of Newfoundland before joining the University of Winnipeg in 1987 as an NSERC University Research Fellow.

Randy was Regional Councillor of the CAP in 1992-1993, and chaired the Division of Theoretical Physics from 2000 to 2002. He was one of the founding members of the Winnipeg Institute for Theoretical Physics and served as its Director from 1997-98. Randy chaired the Physics Department at the University of Winnipeg from 2002 to 2005, when he became Associate Dean of Science at the University of Winnipeg. Randy was the recipient of two of the University's highest honours: the Marsha Hanen Award for Excellence in Creating Community Awareness and the Erica and Arnold Rogers Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship.

Some of Randy's most important work was in the field of statistical field theory, which has a wide range of applications including the quark gluon plasma, bareogenesis and the evolution of the early universe, and various condensed matter systems. Randy established an international reputation early in his career when, along with collaborator Gordon Semenoff of the University of British Columbia, he wrote a series of three seminal papers deriving the Feynman and cutting rules for obtaining discontinuities for real time finite temperature amplitudes. These papers, written 25 years ago, have close to 500 citations and continue to be cited extensively to this day. 
A few years later, Randy helped to clarify the gauge independence of physical quantities in hard thermal loop theory, which makes it possible to perform consistent perturbative calculations for gauge theories at finite temperature. He also used the formalism of finite temperature field theory to do several calculations of importance to experimentalists, including rates for fermion damping, bremsstrahlung, photon production, Compton and annihilation processes in thermal QCD. In addition Randy did fundamental work that helped to establish the mathematical connection between effective kinetic theory and quantum field theory.

One of the things that made Randy special as a physicist was the breadth of his interests and knowledge. This enabled him to make lasting contributions in an incredible variety of fields, including chaos in classical non-linear systems, quantum information theory and quantum computing. Randy enthusiastically embraced the unexpected link between physics and disease mechanisms provided by network science. For example, along with a colleague at the NRC Institute for Biodiagnostics in Winnipeg and several undergraduate research assistants, Randy explored ways of introducing statistical mechanics concepts into networks used for infectious diseases, including a Markov network for modelling two co-circulating strains of influenza.  Most recently Randy co-wrote an article for Physics in Canada on medical isotope production. Randy also made valuable contributions to programming and development in Perl, including four highly regarded books on the subject and the establishment of a search engine for the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. Despite the significance of this work, many of Randy's physics collaborators are unaware his endeavours in this area.

Randy's eclectic interests, knowledge and expertise, combined with his innate sense of curiosity, enabled him to consider fundamental questions from a different and often unconventional perspective. This is exemplified in his approach to the question \what defines music?", inspired by his daughter's struggle to master the violin. From his work on non-linear systems he realised that what we think of as music has a time series characterised by a fractal structure that self-replicates on many different time scales. He quantified this by constructing a rather remarkable plot which showed that the power spectrum generated from the scores of a variety of very diverse musical genres could be collapsed onto a single curve, and that music, like nature, must live on the edge of chaos. Based on this insight, and drawing on his skill and expertise in perl, Randy, together with two undergraduate students, constructed a computer program that could, in his own words, \be used to compose some (relatively decent) songs". This work was presented in his fascinating 2003 CAP-CASCA lecture and forms the basis of an article that appears in the March 2003 issue of the Perl Journal1.

Randy was also a committed teacher who cared very deeply about his students, invariably placing the blame on his own pedagogical skills if they failed to grasp the subject. The students in turn admired him for his clarity, humour and above all his unwavering dedication to their intellectual growth.  In addition to the impressive body of work summarized above, Randy somehow found time and energy to make contributions to education far beyond the classroom. He was the leader of numerous new degree programs in science at the University of Winnipeg, including Radiation Health and Safety; Science, Environment and Indigenous Knowledge; and pre-professional programs. He was also dedicated to public awareness, involvement and education in science. He founded the University of Winnipeg's Let's Talk Science program, and was involved in the Eco-Kids programs, the Community School Investigators, the homework club at the Wii Chiiwaakanak Learning Centre, and the University of Winnipeg's off-campus homework club. Randy's dedication was such that he not only tutored inner city children himself, but he also drove them home from the homework club when need arose.

One of Randy's most remarkable traits was that he did all of the above, and more, for the pleasure of discovery and for the good of others, not for the recognition or accolades that he so
richly deserved. The extent of his modesty was such that even his colleagues and collaborators are only now starting to appreciate the many facets of his accomplishments.

Randy was a kind, unassuming and selfless human being who touched many lives with his wisdom, patience, sense of humour, gentle spirit and quiet strength. He was loved and admired by his family, friends and colleagues. Randy changed the lives of the students who passed through his classrooms, the neighbourhood kids who he helped to tutor, and the thousands of others who will benefit from the outreach and education programs he created. The void left by his passing is immense.

Meg Carrington, Brandon University
Gabor Kunstatter, University of Winnipeg
John Whitehead, Memorial University of Newfoundland