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25-08-2020
In Memoriam: Prof Ron Allen (1940-2020)
| Submitter: | Jan Noordam, Wim Brouw, Tony Willis |
| Description: | The WSRT was the premier radio telescope in the world for at least a decade. It was built by Oort's Leiden, but it put the astronomical institute in Groningen squarely on the map. The latter was achieved by attracting a remarkable bunch of talented astronomers from all over the world, who thrived in the electrifying family atmosphere of Dutch astronomy. One of those was Ron Allen, who recently passed away. Ron was born in Canada. He got a BSc in Satskatchewan, and a PhD from MIT, after which he held a PostDoc in Meudon (France), before moving to Groningen. His specialty was Galactic Structure, and lately he has been spending a lot of time on the important question whether OH radicals might be employed as tracers for molecular gas. Of course he took his turn in chairing the department. But much more importantly, he was a valuable member of the unusual Groningen team, a keen scientist and a stimulating teacher(*). He also had a voice like a bronze bell, which easily commanded a room. This appears to be a common feature of astronomers named Ron. He left in 1984 to chair the astronomy department in Illinois, and spent the last 30 years at the famous Space Telecope Science Institute in Baltimore, with a chair at nearby Johns Hopkins. He combined this with breeding sheep. It was always fun to run into him at the various tribal meetings of our small world of radio-astronomy. A memorial web page has been set up for people to post a note, a memory, a picture: https://www.mykeeper.com/profile/RonAllen/ (*) Ron's teaching extended beyond Groningen by arranging for your present interlocutor to visit Penticton in Canada for a few months to study the problem of using the data taken with a large single dish to provide zero-spacing information to WSRT maps. The fact that I did know very little about the subject he considered an opportunity. He was right, of course. |
| Copyright: | Baltimore Sun |
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