Throughout his long career Adam Sobiczewski has made major contributions to the interpretation and understanding of experimental results on the synthesis and decay properties of the heaviest nuclei and to the development of theoretical methods for predicting properties of as yet undiscovered nuclei. He led the way in using a dynamical approach to macroscopic-microscopic calculations of spontaneous fission half-lives of deformed nuclei in a multi-dimensional deformation space without adjustable parameters. Examination of the well-deformed even-even nuclei with Z=104--114 and N=142--176 showed that inclusion of higher order deformations greatly increased the N=162 shell correction. Nuclei in the region of the doubly magic deformed nucleus ²⁷⁰108 were predicted to be much more stable than previously believed and significant deviations from the old rule of rapidly decreasing spontaneous-fission half-lives with increasing Z should occur. The impact and influence of these results on experimental investigations and the interactions between theory and experiment will be discussed.

PACS numbers: 25.85.Ca, 27.90.+b