I am very sorry to inform you that Professor Barbara Węglarska passed away last Friday night (02.10.2020), in a hospital in Kraków, at the age of 98.

She has been suffering from kidney malfunction for many months, which entailed frequent and exhausting dialyses. Last Wednesday her condition has suddenly worsen and she was rushed to a hospital where sepsis was diagnosed. Unfortunately, given her advanced age and multiple other afflictions, the treatment was unsuccessful. She has been given morphine to ease her pain and she passed away in peace.

Barbara Węglarska in her apartment in Kraków, in 2003.

Barbara was born in a village near Kraków on the 20.02.1922. She survived through the horrors of the World War II and communism, including the extremely difficult times of Stalinism when scientific discoveries, such as DNA structure, were considered ‘imperialist’ and were banned at Polish universities, and it took a lot of effort and skills to get hold of scientific literature from the West. Nevertheless, Barbara was an internationally recognised tardigradologists who worked mainly on tardigrade morphology and ultrastructure, but she also published important papers on embryology, physiology as well as faunistics and taxonomy. Altogether, she published around fifty research articles. Her first tardigrade papers were published in the 1950’ (including a publication in Nature) and her last article was published in 2006. Apart from tardigrades, she also worked on scale insects (Coccidae). Barbara started studying and working at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków soon after the WWII has ended. She obtained her MSc degree in 1951, her PhD in 1960, her DSc in 1968 and she earned her Professorship in 1984. She retired in 1992, but she kept on doing her research into the first decade of the present century. Although her sight was very limited in the last years and she could no longer read, she was always eager to hear about the latest developments in tardigrade research.

In recognition of her achievements, she was awarded high Polish medals, such as the Golden Cross of Merit or Order of Polonia Restituta. She was also recognised by the international community of tardigradologists who have named two genera (heterotardigrade Barbaria and eutardigrade Weglarskobius) and five species (heterotardigrades Bryodelphax weglarskae and Claxtonia barbarae, and eutardigrades Isohypsibius barbarae, Bertolanius weglarskae and Minibiotus weglarskae) in her honour.

Barbara Węglarska in her apartment in Kraków, in 2018.

Many of you were hoping to see her at the 15th International Symposium on Tardigrada which is planned to be held next year. I can tell you that Barbara was looking forward to see you too. In order to honour her, both the Symposium and Symposium Proceedings will be dedicated to her memory. Barbara was a member of the Honorary Committee of the upcoming Symposium, but most importantly she was the sole organiser of the 2nd International Symposium on Tardigrada that took place in Kraków in 1977. It was an immense effort to organise an international event behind the Iron Curtain. For example, Barbara had to provide the authorities not only with the names of participants, but also with some of their personal details such as the birth dates and names of parents as all westerners were considered potential spies by the communist government. Wanting to avoid bothering her guests, Barbara made up the dates and other details. Fortunately, the authorities haven't found out about her hustle, otherwise she would had been in serious trouble.

Barbara was a great person, always keen to help and make you laugh with her sharp wit and dark sense of humour. She was a fighter and compromise was not one of her favourite words.

She will be missed.

***

For the last several years, Barbara had a ringback melody in her mobile phone, which was the cover of “Supergirl” by Anna Naklab (originally performed by Reamonn). Whenever you called her, you could hear these lines, which now will always ring in my head whenever I think of her:

And then she'd say,
"It's alright
I got home late last night
But I'm a supergirl
And supergirls just fly"
And supergirls don't cry.