Joanna Izewska
Former head of the IAEA Secondary Standard Dosimetry Laboratory
Former head of the IAEA Secondary Standard Dosimetry Laboratory
I met Andrée Dutreix in Leuven, Belgium, in 1994. On her and Emmanuel van der Schueren’s invitation I joined the Leuven team working in a project dedicated to dosimetry audits in radiotherapy centres of three Central European countries (Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary). The project called EROPAQ was supervised directly by Andrée who was a visiting professor at the University of Leuven at that time.
She used to come every month to Leuven to review the progress and develop work plans for the coming weeks. I remember Andrée as a very charismatic person whom, out of respect, everybody called Madame Dutreix. She was a demanding boss, getting the best performance out of her scientific team. On a few occasions Andrée invited us to restaurants in Leuven, where we enjoyed her company along with good food and wine. She was telling us stories, mostly of her foreign travels, peppered with anecdotes and funny situations. I worked in the EROPAQ project in Leuven till late 1995.
I believe participating in Andrée’s project was a turning point in my professional career. Shortly after I returned from Leuven, I joined the IAEA in Vienna, Austria, first as a consultant, and as of 1997 as head of the IAEA Dosimetry Laboratory. At that time, I conducted a project on developing methodologies for national dosimetry audit networks in various countries across the world and I was honoured to invite Andrée’s collaboration. She was a consultant in the IAEA dosimetry audit projects till 2003. Overall, Andrée collaborated with the IAEA since 1959, advising on various important aspects of dosimetry and medical radiation physics.
I will remember Andrée as an exceptional person who turned my interests to radiotherapy QA and dosimetry audits, which I followed for more than 20 years to come.
Joanna Izewska and Andrée Dutreix at the Leipzig ESTRO meeting in 2006