Alan was born and raised in Los Angeles. He earned his B.A. in mathematics from UCLA, spent a year at Columbia, and then transferred to Caltech, where he received his Ph.D. in physics in 1966 under Robert B. Leighton. While at Caltech, he served as a teaching assistant in a new course for undergraduate physics that was being developed by Prof. Richard Feynman, work that would later become the Feynman Lectures on Physics. During his time at Caltech, Alan began his lifelong engagement with solar observations, studying solar photospheric magnetic and velocity fields at Mt. Wilson. Later he was hired by the Lockheed Corporation as the leader of the Lockheed Solar Observatory at the Rye Canyon facility in Santa Clarita, CA. In 1976, the research group left Rye Canyon and joined the already established research group in northern California in Palo Alto, in what eventually became the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL). His tenure at Lockheed spanned more than 50 years.
Alan was a central figure in modern solar physics. Over the course of his career at LMSAL, he helped lead and shape many of the field’s most influential instruments and missions, including the H-alpha Telescopes on Skylab, SOUP on SpaceLab 2, SOHO/MDI, TRACE, Hinode/SOT, SDO/AIA, SDO/HMI, and IRIS. His work consistently expanded both our observational reach and our conceptual understanding of the Sun. These instruments did not simply provide data, they reshaped how we think about the solar atmosphere and magnetic activity as an interconnected system, and continue to define the way we observe the Sun today.
Starting with TRACE, he pioneered the open science data policy that is now common in solar physics, and which allows the global science community to benefit from mission data products without proprietary periods, accelerating discovery and broadening participation in ways that continue to shape heliophysics today.
To facilitate the development and science investigation of several of these projects, Alan co-founded the Stanford-Lockheed Martin Institute for Space Research (SLISR) where he served as Co-director and adjunct professor.
Alan’s contributions were recognized across the scientific, engineering and space communities. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (2003) and the National Academy of Sciences (2004), a reflection of the profound impact he had on both science and instrumentation. He also received the SPD George Ellery Hale Prize in 2001 (the first recipient from a private company), and the AGU John Adam Fleming Medal (2011), and was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame (2010). His leadership on NASA missions was also recognized through multiple NASA awards, reflecting the profound and lasting impact of his work on the agency’s scientific enterprise.
Beyond his many scientific and technical contributions, Alan was a gifted and generous mentor. All of us at LMSAL and many across our community benefited from his guidance, insight, and encouragement. He had a unique ability to bring people together around complex problems, to inspire those around him to do their best work, and to see both the immediate challenge and the longer arc where the field needed to go.
Alan will be deeply missed by his family, friends, colleagues, and the international solar physics community.
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Bart De Pontieu, Marc DeRosa, Alberto Sainz Dalda, Meng Jin, Neal Hurlburt, Mark Cheung, Alison Nordt, Jim Lemen, Georgios Chintzoglou, Barbara Thompson, Madhulika Guhathakurta