Ülo

On Earth Day, my thoughts traveled to my grandfather, Ülo. He was a dedicated scientist, but is also my greatest idol in life.

His life was not easy (by far), but he never wavered from his goals or from what he saw as the right way to go through life.

He was born in the independent Estonia, in 1921. From his early days he had a drive towards science, but his studies were interrupted by the World War II. Estonia was in a tough place - first we were invaded by Russia, then in 1941 by Germans and in 1944 by Russians again. Big mobilizations happened and both sides drafted young estonians in masse. Ülo was drafted by the Germans, so he had to fight on this side of the war.

As a radio operator he was able stay away from direct fire, but had a lot of tough experiences there. But he always managed to find a tongue-in-cheek angle even to this. In November of 1944 he was somewhere in Poland. An HR manager of the Wehrmacht approached him and said that he had too many unused vacation days. It was just six months until the end of the war! He then asked “Where should I go?”, HR answered “Where do you want to go?”. He had never been to Vienna, so that’s where he went.

Post war he managed to come back to his dedication to real sciences. In 1960 he became the youngest professor ever at Tartu University.

I have one visual of Ülo, that is the strongest. He is sitting behind his big desk, all covered with research papers and books. He is crouched over that table and solving something. Even when he was 90 years old this was still his happy place. It did not matter if it was a weekend or weekday, his head was solving something all the time. What I admire about him the most is his dedication to his craft - a lifelong push to get better.

In the late 80s Ülo got a computer. One of the first I had ever seen. A 386 with a VGA monitor, roughly a million times slower than today’s phones, but faster than anything he had worked with before.

It was so exciting I couldn’t sleep.

One memory stands out. I was maybe 11 or 12. Grandfather was programming something in MatLab and I sat next to him, waiting for him to finish so I could play my basketball game. Two or three hours. Grandmother brought sandwiches to both hard workers.

It’s hard to imagine anything more annoying than solving a complex problem with someone sitting impatiently next to you. But grandfather had his own logic. The situation didn’t conflict with it.

When he turned 90, his health worsened. His eyesight got so bad that he could only read for an hour per day. But then he got an offer to write a book by Springer, the most serious European scientific publisher. He got a researcher to help and suddenly this project invigorated him - his health improved and he got it all done. What a beautiful example of how important brain as a body part is to us and also how purpose can drive everything.

In 2016 he got a lifetime scientific award from the President of Estonia. With my father we decided to take him to a city of his choice - being an avid traveler, he picked Amsterdam. I took my son Laur with us, so it was four generations of men doing a four-day trip. As one of my friends said “not your average boys trip to Amsterdam”.

Having lived his life crunching numbers, it felt to me that he wanted to make it to a hundred. Of course he did. At his hundredth birthday we were in their garden and mid-party he came to me and said “Kristjan, I feel tired, can you take me to my room to rest”. We went and when he laid down he started to talk about his scientific work. “I am a bit sad to see, nobody is really picking up my work in Europe. But somehow it has become popular in Asia and I am getting many emails from Thailand and Japan, this is progressing now”. He was 100 years old!

He passed away in 2022. I still miss him every week. But quite often the talks in my head with him are happy ones. I wonder how he would approach some problem or how he would see the current issues - from Trump to climate problems. While physically he is gone, mentally he is not. A goal in life?

Ülo was a big fan of nature. So if you are working in the climate sector, whether you are a scientist, startup employee or a founder, CSO - the last two years have not been easy for you. But knowing Ülo, he would be very proud of you. Dedication to something meaningful.

Thank you.