On June 16, 2023, Professor Franz-Josef Kevekordes, one of the founding members of today's Computer Science at the Paderborn University, passed away.
Born in 1934 in Fredeburg/Westphalia, Franz-Josef Kevekordes started his academic career in 1955 with the study of electrical engineering, which he completed in 1962 at the Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina in Braunschweig as Diplom-Ingenieur. From 1962 to 1967, he helped set up the still young department for automation technology with a focus on "process automation in the processing industry" at Siemens in Erlangen. In 1968, he switched to teaching, initially as a civil engineer at the State Engineering School in Paderborn, which later became the Comprehensive Paderborn University and is now the Paderborn University.
During this time, he was also actively involved in an advisory capacity in the establishment of the private substitute vocational school of Nixdorf Computer AG.
Following his work as a teacher at the University of Applied Sciences, he was appointed professor in 1981 with the task of representing the then young, interdisciplinary field of "Computer Engineering". This field combines problems of computer science with the research of design, structure and function of complex computer architectures. It focuses on the development of software solutions for the control of digital hardware and networked systems. In 1987, Franz-Josef Kevekordes was appointed university professor. Until his retirement in 1996, he served as head of the Informatics and Process Laboratory (IPL). In this responsibility he managed, besides the supervision of numerous final theses of students, many projects with mainly local companies.
