TÜBA Member Prof. Dr. Aral Okay Passed Away
TÜBA Honorary Member and Istanbul Technical University (ITU) Faculty Member Geologist Prof. Dr. Aral Okay was laid to rest in Istanbul.
Prof. Dr. Okay, a retired faculty member and former director of the General Geology Department of the Department of Geological Engineering and the Eurasian Institute of Geosciences at ITU's Faculty of Mining, passed away on November 12 at the age of 70. Prof. Dr. Ahmet Cevat Acar, TÜBA Council Member and Rector of Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, who attended the ceremony held for Prof. Dr. Aral Okay at ITU Süleyman Demirel Cultural Center on behalf of TÜBA, said in his speech: "Prof. Aral's achievements throughout his academic life have always honored all of us and our country. I have no doubt that Prof. Aral, who was a very valuable and principled academician, will make important contributions to our country, the world and humanity. May his soul rest in peace and his place be in heaven."
Prof. Dr. Okay was buried in Kilyos Cemetery after the funeral prayer performed at ITU Abdülhakim Sancak Mosque following the ceremony where TÜBA Full Member Prof. Dr. İsmail Koyuncu, Prof. Dr. Celal Şengör and Prof. Dr. Naci Görür also delivered speeches.
Who is Prof. Dr. Aral Okay?
He was born in Istanbul in 1953. He graduated from Istanbul High School in 1971 and in the same year he was sent to England to study geology with a scholarship from the Mineral Research and Exploration (MTA) Institute. Between 1973 and 1976, he received his B.Sc. degree with first class honors from the Department of Geology at University College London, and between 1976 and 1980, he received his Ph.D. degree from Cambridge University. Between 1980 and 1983, he worked as a geologist at the MTA Institute in Ankara. In 1983, he joined the Department of Geological Engineering, Faculty of Mining, ITU. He became an associate professor at ITU in 1986 and a professor in 1992. He was a visiting researcher at Ruhr Universitat Bochum in Germany with Alexander von Humboldt Scholarship in 1994-1995 and at University of California Santa Barbara in the USA with Fulbright Scholarship in 2005-2006.
Aral Okay, who works on the geological evolution and metamorphic petrology of Türkiye and the Eastern Mediterranean region, has published more than 150 scientific articles, 120 of which have been published in journals included in the Scientific Citation Index and have been cited more than 10,000 times. He received the TÜBİTAK Incentive Award in 1986, the Sedat Simavi Science Award in 1992, TÜBİTAK Science Award in 2002, and was elected a member of TÜBA in 1996. Okay was elected an Honorary Member of the American Mineralogical Society in 2009. In 2019, Prof. Dr. Aral Okay received the Georg Forster Award for lifetime scientific contributions from the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation in Germany and continued his studies at ITU.
