One of the unquestioned giants of physics and astrophysics, Hans Bethe, died on 6 March 2005, at the venerable age of 98, in his home town of Ithaca, New York. Seven decades of contributing to research and a Nobel Prize for his work on stellar hydrogen burning make a listing of his honors superfluous (besides being impossible in this space).
Dr. Richard B. Dunn, astronomer emeritus at the National Solar Observatory, died of a heart attack on September 29, 2005. He was recognized as one of the foremost experimental solar physicists. His innovative designs for telescopes and instruments led to many important discoveries in solar physics.
Renowned astronomer and astronomy popularizer Kenneth L. Franklin died early Monday morning, June 18, 2007, in Boulder, Colorado, two weeks after undergoing heart surgery. He was 84 years old.
Cornell University Emeritus Professor of Physics, Kenneth I. Greisen, died on March 17, 2007 of cancer at the Hospicare residence in Ithaca, New York. He was 89 years old. Prof. Greisen was well-known for his participation in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos and for his many contributions to the study of cosmic ray physics. More quietly, Prof. Greisen also made significant contributions to the teaching of Physics at the high school and university levels. He was of service to the Cornell and Ithaca communities in many ways both during his university career and after his retirement.
Dr. Herbert Gursky, Acting Associate Director of Research for the Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL's) Systems Directorate, and formerly Superintendent of the Space Science Division and Chief Scientist of the E. O. Hulburt Center for Space Research. Dr. Gursky died following a long illness on late Friday afternoon, December 1, 2006. Dr. Gursky was a great friend, valued colleague, and distinguished researcher who will be missed greatly.
Tor Hagfors, a world leader in the use of radar techniques to observe ionospheres, surfaces and interiors of planetary bodies, died of heart-failure on 17 January 2007, in Puerto Rico, at the age of 76. He was born on 8 December 1930, in Oslo, Norway, and received his education there and in Trondheim, where he graduated with exceptionally good grades with a degree in technical physics from the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) in 1955.
Cosmologist Edward R. (Ted) Harrison, emeritus Distinguished University Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, died on 29 January 2007 in his retirement city of Tucson, Arizona, where he was adjunct professor at the Steward Observatory, University of Arizona. The cause of death was colon cancer. He is survived by a sister, brother, and daughter. (A son died in 2000.)
Longtime Harvard Curator of Astronomical Photographs and AAVSO officer Martha Hazen passed away on 23 December 2006 at Hingham, Massachusetts, after a short illness due to acute myelogenous leukemia.
Wayne Carlos Hendrickson was born on born 4 December 1953 in Alhambra, California. He earned a BA/BS in Physics from the University of California at Irvine circa 1975. His PhD in astrophysics was earned in 1984 at the University of Texas at Austin. Hendrickson worked at Raytheon Corporation, for most of the rest of his life, on classified research. He died 8 August 2007.
John J. Hillman, a dedicated NASA civil servant, spectroscopist, astrophysicist, planetary scientist, and mentor, died on February 12, 2006 of ocular melanoma at his home in Columbia, Maryland. His professional and personal interests were wide-reaching and varied, and he devoted his career to the advancement of our understanding of the beauty and wonder in the world around us. His love of nature, art, and science made him a true Renaissance man.
For Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit, who died on 9 April 2007 in New Haven, Connecticut, shortly after her 100th birthday, World War II, in which she did at least her fair share of the work, was "the war," but she also lived through World War I ("the Great War" until she was well into her 30s), Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War, and (we hope) most of Iraq.
Michael W. Johnson was born on 1 September 1949. He received his B.S. (Physics) from the University of San Francisco in 1971, his M.S. (Physics) from the University of Toledo in 1974, and his Ph.D. (Astrophysics) from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981. His doctoral thesis was entitled, "HEAO A-1 Observations of X ray Emitting Clusters of Galaxies," and he was an author of a 1983 catalog of X-ray emitting clusters.
Frank C. Jones, an emeritus theoretical physicist at NASA, died May 2, 2007 at age 74 after a struggle with a rare form of cancer. He died at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland, surrounded by his family.
Lyman Francis Kells was born in Seattle, Washington, on 19 May 1917. He earned a 1938 BS in Chemistry from the University of Washington. He received a PhD. in 1944, also from the University of Washington.
With the passing of Donald Alexander MacRae on 6 December 2006 at age 90, the astronomy community lost a visionary scientist and a great educator in the field.
Professor Per Maltby, prominent Norwegian Solar Physicist at the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, Norway, died on 24 May 2006. Lung cancer was diagnosed in February, but he was expected to improve. Until the end of March he came to his office every day, got recent papers off the web, and followed his field closely as he had always done.
Timothy Pendleton McCullough Jr., 93, a retired research physicist who was a pioneer in the measurement of microwave radiation from planetary surfaces, died of cardiac arrest on 19 November 2004, at Inova Fairfax Hospital. He lived in Springfield, VA.
McCullough, who was principally a radio astronomer, published 22 scientific research papers while working in the Atmosphere and Astrophysics Division of NRL, from 1946 until his retirement in 1975.
The astronomy community lost a good friend when Tom Metcalf was killed in a skiing accident on Saturday, 7 July 2007, in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado. Tom was widely known for prolific work on solar magnetic fields, hard-X-ray imaging of solar flares, and spectral line diagnostics. He was often characterized as "one of the nicest guys in science."
Donald Edward Osterbrock, one of the leading figures of post-World War II astronomy, died suddenly of a heart attack on 11 January 2007, while walking near his office at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was 82 years old. His initials spelled D.E.O. (God in latin!), but he was known simply as Don to his many friends and colleagues.
Bohdan Paczynski, Lyman Spitzer, Jr. Professor of Astrophysics, died at home in Princeton, New Jersey, on April 19, 2007.