Remembering Professor Dr. Hab. Aleksander Guterch

The Western Carpathians are an important mountain range of the Alpine-type structure in Central Europe, which is also a common orographic phenomenon mainly in Slovakia, Poland, and partially in the Czech Republic.For the sake of completeness, it should be stated that research and interpretation of the development and structure of this orographic phenomenon would not be possible without knowledge of the inner Western Carpathians and their basins, which are part of the Pannonian basin.It extends mostly to the territory of Hungary, and, in the east, also partly to the territory of the present Ukraine.The dominant importance of the Carpathian Mountains for the knowledge of the geological development of Central Europe to the east of the Alps, and the Bohemian Massif to the south of the European Platform and to the north of the Dinarides and Balkanides follows from the above.Thanks to this mountain range, a very long and fruitful history of joint geological research by Slovak, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, and Austrian geoscientists was written, extending from the times of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy to the present day.Its important examples are thousands of reports, manuscripts and maps, hundreds of scientific publications and monographs.The obtained results were often of great benefit to the development and trend of knowledge of the geology of the world.While thinking about Prof. Aleksander Guterch, but also Prof. Marek Grad (our last joint photo is in Fig. 1) and a whole range of geologists and geophysicists of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS), it should be emphasized that the breathtaking mountains of the Western Carpathians significantly contributed to their scientific knowledge and interests.