90 Years with Curiosity at Heart

When Dr. Juris Zoldners, Doctor of Chemical Sciences, celebrated his 90th birthday at the end of August, his morning began, as always, with a smile and a kind-hearted joke that made his colleagues smile as well. The day ended in the laboratory – the place that has been at the center of his daily rhythm for more than sixty years. There, Juris Zoldners continues his experiments with unceasing interest, convincing everyone that science is not a profession to be left at the door, but a way of life that gives meaning to everyday existence.

In this lightness, and at the same time steadfast devotion to work, seems to lie his greatest professional secret – how, at the age of ninety, he still maintains a creative curiosity. Zoldners’ life journey has become a symbol of the Institute itself: he has witnessed changing research directions and generations of scientists, always remaining loyal to his Institute.

Dr. Juris Zoldners’ professional story began in his school chemistry classroom, where he fell in love with chemistry so deeply that he spent all the money he had earned through hard summer work on books and set up a small “home laboratory.” In that little lab, he created his first colorful rockets – not to impress friends or neighbors, but to understand how and why substances transform.

This curiosity led the enthusiastic young man to the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Latvia and soon after to the newly founded Institute of Forestry Problems (now the Latvian State Institute of Wood Chemistry), where Juris began his work in 1958 and where he remains active to this day. He has devoted 67 years to Latvian science and his field.

In the 1950s, the young chemist’s path became closely intertwined with that of academician Arvīds Kalniņš. Their collaboration gave rise to ideas that became entire fields of research in wood chemistry, later transforming into technologies, inventions, and solutions that changed the industry’s everyday practices. The themes of Zoldners’ publications reveal the breadth of his scientific spectrum: the use of lignin in polymer composites, the structure and properties of wood–polymer materials, chemical transformations of cellulose and hemicelluloses, and the effective utilization of bioresources in packaging and building material technologies.

LSIWC building (1960s)

Zoldners’ career is crowned by more than 100 publications, 12 inventions, his work as a laboratory head, and participation in a wide range of interdisciplinary research projects – from cellulose and hemicelluloses to biocomposites and packaging materials. Yet above all are the people whose professional beginnings he has nurtured — the many engineers, master’s graduates, and doctors who today continue to strengthen Latvian science and shape its future.

The laboratory has been at the heart of Juris’ life, yet he also finds inspiration in his garden in the Tukums region and in photography. And the poems he has written for colleagues and friends are sometimes poignant, more often lightly ironic, and always as precise as a perfectly executed chemistry experiment.

Today, at the age of 90, Juris Zoldners continues to search for answers and pose new scientific questions at the LSIWC Cellulose Laboratory – with the same passion as in his youth, when he first lit a colorful rocket in his little home laboratory.