Daily Image
12-07-2010
The Lion of Zwiggelte turns 70
| Submitter: | Jan Noordam |
| Description: | ASTRON people, especially the Dutch protestant variety, like to build lovely instruments quietly and collectively, without drawing attention to themselves (this is one of the reasons why they publish as little as possible). Therefore, we rarely honor individuals with a personal AJDI. Nevertheless, even knowing that he will disapprove, we make an exception for the 70th birthday of Wim Brouw. Wim started his ASTRON career by saving the WSRT, i.e. by singlehandedly writing the calibration and imaging software that had been a little underestimated in the plans (then too!). To do this, he had to (inobtrusively) advance the theory of Aperture Synthesis, especially for East-West arrays. His software was the basis for all the great WSRT discoveries of the 70's. He then played an important role in producing the famous ultra-high dynamic range WSRT images by re-implementing the existing Redundancy (selfcal) package into its more user-friendly NEWSTAR guise. For good measure, he included extra functionality, like mosaicking for the WENSS survey. Finally, he wrote several modules for AIPS++ that are still widely used today, e.g. by CASA, BBS and MeqTrees. In his spare time, he squeezed unlikely performance out of the computers of the day, and wrote the only suite of financial administration software that our administration has never complained about. Apart from being a highly talented, and obscenely productive scientific programmer, Wim was also a born "bestuurder". He served for almost 20 years as the effective Director in Dwingeloo. His job was complicated by the organizational structure at the time, which included a rotating chairmanship of the "Werkgroep" in Dwingeloo, and a rather restive National Supremo in Leiden. On the other hand, ZWO was not yet NWO. Wim's defining characteristic as a Leader was that he hated to give direct orders, hoping that others would see the way forward as clearly as he did, and quietly filling in the missing bits himself. And, supported by a remarkable wife, he was a Father to his people. Judging by the infamous Alliant machine, the picture was taken around 1985, in the old Computer Room (note the time!). Wim very much looks the part of the director/prodigy, much more so than he did in real life. Of course he was also a Professor etc. After a decade in Australia, we are happy to have him back in Dwingeloo. As an Ageing Sage, he is invited to chair one Review Committee after another, all over the world. He never refuses to serve, and usually does most of the work himself. But we hope that, at some point, he will rejoin the fun of calibrating ASTRON's radio telescopes. |
| Copyright: | ASTRON |
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