On
March 1999 professor Constantin Onu passed, at the venerable age of 87, of
which 35 were dedicated to the academic and research career at the Polytechnic
Institute of Iasi.
A continuator
of the tough people of the Bistrita region, around Brosteni, he inherited
from them the character strength, verticality and profound national feeling
that characterized him for all his life.
His parents
left these mountain regions at the beginning of the century, receiving land
around Vladeni, Iasi county, and formed here a group of industrious, right
and tough people in the village of Andrieseni, founded by them, where his
father, Gheorghe Onu, was one of the society pillars.
Constantin
Onu was born on September 21, 1912, graduated primary school in his village,
high school in Iasi, becoming afterwards a student at the Electrical Engineering
Institute, from the Science Faculty of the Iasi University. He graduates academic
studies in 1939, with an Electrical Engineering diploma, with the special
'very good' mention. Both as a pupil and as a student he was correct, modest,
honesty loving and denying incorrectness and immorality. In
the 1939 autumn, graduating academic studies with an engineering diploma and
very good results, he was offered an assistantship position by Professor Alexander
Cisman, at the Radio-techniques discipline. Immediately after taking his position,
he was forced by the war to actively participate to all movements of the Polytechnic
Institute 'Gh. Asachi' from Iasi to Cernauti then Turnu-Severin and back to
Iasi, in the years of the World War II, when poverty and next day insecurity
were a permanent presence. During that period of profound social and political
transformations the teaching assistant and then lecturer Constantin Onu, promotes
to assistant professor in 1946 at the Telephony and Telegraphy discipline
and in 1949 to professor at the Week Current Techniques discipline.
In his
academic activity, Professor Constantin Onu put all his work power and managerial
skills showing good professional results and especially his humanism in the
relations with his colleagues and towards his students. He was loved and respected
as being one of the best examples to be followed in the academic and managerial
activity in the university.
In the
research activity, both in the university and as a researcher at the Technical
Physics Institute of the Romanian Academy, he showed fully his love for the
Romanian country, as most of his activity was oriented towards nature, ecology,
towards preserving the natural richness of our wonderful country (radioactivity
of water and soil in Bucovina, water life protection by electric or ultrasonic
fields and so on) as he called and understood.
By the
final departure from among us of professor Constantin Onu, the Technical University
'Gh. Asachi' Iasi and our society as a whole looses a great man, of a disarming
modesty, who served with all devotion and love the technical education structures
of our country, to which he dedicated his whole activity with profound honesty,
correctness and humanism.
