An airplane crash Friday in Turkey killed 57 people, six of them academics on their way to a physics conference, according to the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet.

Identified among the dead were Engin Arık, a physics professor, Özgen Berkol Doğan, a research assistant, and Engin Abat, a graduate student, all from Boğaziçi University; and Şenel Fatma Boydag, a physics professor, Iskender Hikmet, an assistant professor, and Mustafa Fidan, a research assistant, all from Doğuş University.

An article in The New Anatolian said controllers had lost contact with the Atlas Jet plane at 1:36 a.m. as it was about to land at Isparta’s Suleyman Demirel Airport.

The Turkish Daily News reported that the scholars were en route from Istanbul to Süleyman Demirel University’s Fourth Turkish Accelerator Project, where they were to join 80 of their colleagues to discuss high-energy and accelerator physics. —Don Troop