LAUSR

Prof. Wen Chen was born on February 21, 1967, in Fuzhou, Fujian, China, and passed away in Nanjing at 3:58 am on November 22, 2018, at the shockingly young age of 51. Among many contributions to the community of fractional calculus research, Wen Chen is best known for organizing successfully the ICFDA 2012 (as 5th event of the traditional “International Conferences on Fractional Differentiation and Applications”) in Nanjing, China in May 2012. Many who worked and interacted with Wen in one way or the other expressed strong emotions. For example, Prof. Changpin Li, Shanghai University, China, said “Wen is one of fractional pioneers in China. In the past summer holidays, he called me with very weak breath for discussing some possible co-operations... His death is a big loss in fractional community. ” In the same emails thread, Prof. YangQuan Chen of University of California Merced, USA said highly about Wen: “... His engineering insights to fractional order operators are excellent. His book in Chinese is widely read. He has a wide caliber of interests driven by his curiosity. I wish to say, his work on prime number distribution (ML fitting), as well as his work on LRD toolbox are both very fascinating to me among many others. Of course, his outstanding organization of ICFDA 2012 Nanjing is one of the many of his contributions. We will remember Wen Chen for his contribution to our community in various ways.” Prof. Dumitru Baleanu of Cankaya University, Turkey shared: “It is not easy to describe in words the lost of Wen Chen ... My lecture during the conference organized last week by Professor Luis Vazquez in Madrid was dedicated to him. I met Wen in 2006 in Porto and in several many occasions in Europe and China. In December 2017 I discussed last time with him about the nonlocality and fractional calculus .... I am sure that the group Wen established in his faculty will continue to work very hard in the future and the ideas of Wen will continue ...”