Former IAEA director general Sigvard Arne Eklund died on 30 January 2000 in Vienna. He was 89. Eklund's tenure at the IAEA began in 1961 and continued until 1981. Eklund, who was a close associate of ICTP founder Abdus Salam, played an instrumental role both in the creation of the Centre and in the shaping of the ICTP's agenda during its first two decades of development. Eklund, who often visited, opened the Centre's first seminar on plasma physics in autumn 1964.