Academician An-Pang Tsai passed away in Taichung on May 25, 2019. He was 62 years old.

Dr. Tsai was a renowned scientist on quasi-crystalline materials, whose field of expertise was producing quasicrystal as well as analyzing its structure, plus formulating new metallic catalysts by means of metallurgy.

Quasicrystal is a material discovered in the 1980’s. Dr. Tsai was the first scientist who found stable Al-Cu-Fe quasicrystal with complete structures, thereby establishing the importance of quasicrystal in materials science. In addition, his first paper on quasicrystal, published in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics in 1987, has been cited up to 618 times, with many of his other papers being published in Nature as well. In 2003, Thomson ISI named Dr. Tsai as one of the world’s Highly Cited Scientists.

Dr. Tsai served as Professor at the Institute of Disciplinary Research for Advanced Materials, Tohoku University, as well as Senior Researcher at the National Research Institute for Metals. Moreover, he was conferred an Honorary Doctorate by Institute of National Polytechnique de Lorraine, France, and Distinguished Professor by Tohoku University. Dr. Tsai’s many accolades include Masumoto Hakaru Award from the Japan Institute of Metals, and the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon bestowed by the Japanese government in 2014 in recognition of his many outstanding academic contributions

Dr. Tsai was elected Academician of Academia Sinica in 2018.