Remembering Professor Ralph Kenna (27 August 1964 – 26 October 2023)

It is with sadness that we announce the passing of Professor Ralph Kenna, an esteemed member of the scientific community and Associate Editor of Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), who left us in October 2023.

Kenna was an Irish mathematician and theoretical physicist. He obtained his PhD in 1993 at the University of Graz, Austria. He then joined the University of Liverpool (1994-1997) and the Trinity College Dublin (1997-1999) as an EU Marie Curie Research Fellow. He was also a lecturer in Trinity College from 1998 to 2002. Since 2002, he was affiliated to Coventry University, UK, first as a senior lecturer, then a reader, before being appointed as full professor in 2012. At Coventry University, Kenna co-founded the Applied Mathematics Research Centre and founded the Statistical Physics Group, before they were merged with the Fluid and Complex Systems Research Centre in 2018, of which he served as Deputy Director.

Throughout his career, Kenna made significant contributions to the fields of statistical physics, network science, complex systems, and comparative mythology. He helped solved long-standing problems relating to the properties of the BKT (Berezinskii – Kosterlitz – Thouless) phase transition in the 2D XY model and the scaling behaviour of partition function zeroes. He is widely known by the community for his work on scaling relations for logarithmic corrections at continuous phase transitions. Kenna also pioneered the application of network theory to investigate societies depicted in mythological narratives, opening the way to quantitative research in comparative mythology. His studies in this area have elicited discussions in the academic literature, while his proposed methods have been welcomed by researchers and science policy makers. Some of his works in this field are published in ACS and featured below with free-to-read access.

While Professor Kenna's passing leaves a void, his scholarly legacy will continue to influence current and next generations of researchers. The Editorial Board and staff of ACS extend our heartfelt condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues during this difficult time. As Associate Editor of ACS, Professor Kenna played a pivotal role in shaping the journal's direction, while fostering excellence and collaboration among its members. In memory of Professor Kenna's contributions and illustrious career, we present his selected co-authored publications with free-to-read access for all users.

Journal Articles:

TEMPORAL NETWORK ANALYSIS OF LITERARY TEXTS
SANDRA D. PRADO, SILVIO R. DAHMEN, ANA L.C. BAZZAN, PADRAIG MAC CARRON, and RALPH KENNA
Advances in Complex Systems | Vol. 19, No. 03, 1650005 (2016)

A NETWORKS-SCIENCE INVESTIGATION INTO THE EPIC POEMS OF OSSIAN
JOSEPH YOSE, RALPH KENNA, PÁDRAIG MacCARRON, THIERRY PLATINI, and JUSTIN TONRA
Advances in Complex Systems | Vol. 19, No. 04n05, 1650008 (2016)

THE ENIGMATIC FRÁOCH AND HIS EPONYMOUS TALE — NETWORK ANALYSIS OF AN EARLY IRISH HEROIC ROMANCE
MADELEINE JANICKYJ, DANIEL CURLEY, PÁDRAIG MACCARRON, MIKE MCCARTHY, JOSEPH YOSE, and RALPH KENNA
Advances in Complex Systems | Vol. 25, No. 05n06, 2240006 (2022)

NETWORK ANALYSIS OF THE KYIV BYLYNY CYCLE — EAST SLAVIC EPIC NARRATIVES
PETRO SARKANYCH, NAZAR FEDORAK, YURIJ HOLOVATCH, PÁDRAIG MACCARRON, JOSEPH YOSE, and RALPH KENNA
Advances in Complex Systems | Vol. 25, No. 05n06, 2240007 (2022)

Chapter Contributions:

Universal Scaling Relations for Logarithmic-Correction Exponents
Ralph Kenna
Order, Disorder and Criticalitys, pp. 1-46 (2012), edited by Yurij Holovatch (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine)

Chapter 1: Scaling and Finite-Size Scaling above the Upper Critical Dimension
Ralph Kenna and Bertrand Berche
Order, Disorder and Criticalitys, pp. 1-54 (2015), edited by Yurij Holovatch (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine)