About the author

Adolf Žižek - Dolfi was born in 1942 in Zagreb to the family of Slovenian parents. In Ptuj he finished elementary school and high school, he graduated and finished his masters degree and Ph. D. from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Ljubljana. He received the University Prešeren Award in 1967 and the Professor dr. Bedjanič award in 1980 for a dissertation in the field of systems theory of automata.

First, he served as the professor of physics at Gimnazija Ptuj. Later he worked in Iskra Kranj, in Iskra Ljubljana as the head development of electronic systems. In Maribor he was a researcher at the Institute of Work Safety and Environmental Protection and developed power electronic devices in Tovarna stikalnih naprav Maribor. In this period in Maribor he also worked at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University of Maribor, as an assistant professor for Systems theory and for Reliability and maintainability of systems. He later worked as a designer of computer systems in the Iskra - Delta Ptuj company. He retired back in Ptuj. 

In his early years he was quite actively involved in gymnastics, football and basketball, later with recreational swimming and skiing. In retirement he regularly walked around the area of ​​Ptuj and Ljutomer. Many an idea that is presented in the trilogy Complex Systems, was born at just those long walks. 

In his youth he wrote and published short fiction and poetry. In his later years he published popular science, as well as controversial articles in Slovenian newspapers. He learned to play the clarinet, double bass and piano. He has been leading four musical ensembles that were in their period known throughout Slovenia. He composed popular songs, jazz songs, as well as polkas and waltzes in - for those times - avant-garde style. He always loved music, but only listened to jazz in particular, the Slovenian national-popular music and original Slovenian folk songs. 

In his last years, he worked voluntarily as a group therapist - facilitator (trained in the Netherlands) for the education of people with mental health problems, with the purpose of easing their everyday problems. For this work he received in 2006 an acknowledgment of the European Organization EUFAMI which organizes such trainings in the European Union.