The Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics commemorates our former scientific staff member Henk C. Spruit, who passed away on October 14, 2026. Henk joined our institute in 1978 as a young postdoc in Hermann-Ulrich Schmidt's group and began his groundbreaking research in solar physics, for which he received the George Ellery Hale Prize in 2011. He continued his work on solar flux tubes and solar and stellar magnetic fields throughout his scientific career, and his most influential publications concern this field. However, Henk also worked in many other astrophysical fields, notably stellar structure, accretion disks, and high-energy astrophysics.
