Tapan Sarkar: Losing a Dear Friend and a Wonderful Colleague is Very Painful

It is a privilege presenting an invited paper in this special session of the IEEE-ICEAA Symposium dedicated to the scientific life of late Prof. Tapan Sarkar (1948-2021). I had many fruitful discussions with him on all kinds of EM topics including rapid evaluation of the Sommerfeld Half-Space Integral, Integral Equations and MoM, Near Field Measurement Techniques, etc. What I vividly remember is his zeal for always looking for out-of-the-box solutions in dealing with advanced numerical techniques and their practical implementations for antennas and scattering problems. Additionally we have shared some similar experiences in participating in enormous numbers of national and international conferences and presenting papers in the same sessions and contributing to many committee meetings together and the list goes on and on. We not only lost an exceptional researcher but also a dear friend.