Dr. Ivan Vassilev Ivanov, Professor of Agronomy and a member of the Bulgarian Agricultural Academy of Sciences and the Union of the Bulgarian Scientists, died on 3 July, 1998, in the 2nd City Hospital, Plovdiv, Bulgaria, at the age of 83.

Ivan was born in the small town of Karnobat, near Bourgas on 17 June, 1915. During World War II, he served in the Navy as senior officer and a temporary teacher (19411942) in Debelt, near Bourgas.

He received his M.S. (agronomy) degree in 1946 from Sofia University and his Ph.D. in 1974 from HAC, which involved wheat breeding and wheat seed production techniques. He started work in 1946 as an agronomist at the Institute of Scientific and Applied Research in Karnobat. Dr. Ivanov then transferred to the Agricultural Institute of Dobrich in 1948 to assist Prof. Tanio Sharkov, wheat breeder. He returned to the Institute in Karnobat from 1951 until 1962, when two big wheat breeding centers were formed at Sadovo and Dobrich, near Varna.

Dr. Ivanov served as chairman of the wheat breeding program at the K. Malkoff Agricultural Experimental Station in Sadovo, near Plovdiv, from 1962 until his retirement in 1976. Between 1966 and 1969, he was Deputy Director of Agricultural Experiment Station in Proslav, near Plovdiv. Dr. Ivanov contributed greatly to the development and release of 12 wheat germ plasms and cultivars and received the outstanding research award from the Government in 1978. His bread wheat cultivars Sadovo 1 and Katya were the second and first places finishers in 1977 and 1984, respectively, in a world competition organized by the Agronomy Department at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, U.S. Those cultivars are still grown in Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey as good and productive bread wheats, possessing a balance of agronomic traits.

He authored and co-authored 76 scientific publications during the last 50 years and obtained his title Professor of Agronomy from HAC in 1975. His interest in the harmony of nature and wildlife also extended into his personal life. He enjoyed hunting and fishing and was a member of Karnobat, Dobrich, and Parvomai societies of fishing and hunting. His wife Liliya; his two children, son Vassil and daughter Emiliya, and two grandchildren, Katya and Ilian, survive.

His scientific career and personal life will be examples for all of us.