time, local Europeans set up trade unions, while both European and African workers launched a series of strikes that he was forced to deal with. A collection of his wartime speeches, titled Messages de Guerre, were published in 1945. United Nations Ryckmans wanted his successor to inherit the legacy of political changes which had been launched in the Belgian Congo. In his last speech in Africa, Vers l'Avenir, later published in his speeches to the government council in Etapes et Jalons (1946), he spoke mainly about the aid which Belgium must give to the Belgian Congo, in order to allow the Belgian Congo to improve the well-being of its inhabitants. For a number of years, until 1957, he defended the work done by Belgium in Ruanda-Urundi in the United Nations Trusteeship Council. He was also Belgium's Commissioner for Nuclear Energy, and helped with re-negotiating the terms of the co-operation between Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United States following the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. He was also a member of the council of Lovanium University, the first Congolese university founded in 1954. For health reasons, he did not play a role in preparing the Belgian Congo for independence in the late 1950s. He died in February 1959, 16 months before Congolese independence on 30 June 1960. Family In 1960, during the chaos that followed the independence of the Congo, his son, André, who was a civil servant in Bas-Congo, was in a helicopter looking for isolated Europeans. The helicopter came down in Lukala, a small town in Bas-Congo. André and the pilot were taken prisoner and then killed by Congolese soldiers. In 1962, father and son were posthumously ennobled by King Baudouin of Belgium and given the title of Graaf (count) in the Belgian nobility. Honours Grand cross in Order of St. Sylvester. (Holy See) - 1945 See also List of colonial governors of Ruanda-Urundi List of colonial governors of the Congo Free State and Belgian Congo References Works cited Further reading J. Stengers, in "Libres Propos", in the biography by J. Vanderlinden (1994), "Pierre Ryckmans, 1891-1959", Ed. De Boeck Université. External links RYCKMANS (Pierre Maria Joseph) (comte) in Biographie Belge d'Outre-Mer (Académie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer; T. VII-A, 1973, col. 415–426) "Congo goes to War" from the Times Magazine, 10 Dec 1940 The Belgian Nuclear Research Centre Fonds Andre Ryckmans, an NGO funding development projects Archive Pierre Rychmans,