[SPA] SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER, Volume XXIX, Issue 70

[Newsletter Editor]

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION
SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER
Volume XXIX, Issue 70
Nov.27,2022

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Table of Contents

1. Richard (Dick) Willian McEntire (10 September 1942 - 1 October 2022)

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Richard (Dick) Willian McEntire (10 September 1942 - 1 October 2022)

From: Tom Krimigis, Glenn Mason, Barry Mauk, Don Mitchell, Sasha Ukhorskiy (Barry.Mauk at jhuapl.edu)

Richard (Dick) Willian McEntire, space science experimentalist and longtime Principal Professional Staff at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), died on 1 October 2022 in Silver Spring Maryland.

Dick obtained his B. S. physics degree from MIT in 1964 and his Ph.D. in space physics from the University of Minnesota in 1972.  He joined APL that very same year, 1972.  As an experienced experimentalist, Dick was instrument Principal Investigator or co-Investigator on a number of NASA planetary or magnetospheric missions.  He retired from APL in 2007.

Dick excelled in the area of instrument development for the measurement of energetic charged particle composition and radiation in space. He was key to moving particle instruments from the era of the thin solid-state detectors, used for example during the NASA Voyager era in the mid-1970s, to the thin-foil-time-of-flight designs that lowered by well over an order of magnitude the accessible particle energies in measurements of composition. Those initial developments culminated in the hugely successful Medium Energy Particle Analyzer (MEPA) instrument flown on NASAs Charged Composition Explorer (CCE), managed and built at APL, a part of the multi-satellite Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers (AMPTE) mission launched in 1984. That instrument was a key contributor to identifying in 1985 the ions responsible for the dynamic ring of electric currents that encircle Earth in its magnetosphere, giving rise to the large magnetic disturbances associated with Earth’s Geomagnetic Storms. Most often with Dick’s substantial participation and guidance, that type of sensor became a mainstay for subsequent missions, such as those on NASA’s Galileo, Geotail, and Cassini missions, and its successors in later missions such as NASA’s MESSENGER, New Horizons, Van Allen Probes, MMS, and Juno. When Dick was not actively advancing the technical aspects of these instruments and missions, he was guiding the next generation in their development as Group Supervisor of APL’s Space Physics Group, a position he served until the time of his retirement. Dick’s other scientific management roles included being Project Scientist and, later, Principal Investigator on the AMPTE mission, and also Co-investigator on several others.

Dick was a first-class experimentalist, a physicist of keen insight and intuition, and had a unique ability in getting to the bottom of technical problems and in making things work. Beyond these characteristics, he was a mentor to many of the earlier career staff at APL, always willing to make time available to help and guide colleagues. He also was a wise counsel on many topics, big and small alike, helping immensely in APLs rapid growth and expansion into new science areas and more ambitious missions. And he was a most considerate and kind person throughout his career and a dear friend to many of those of us who worked with him at APL. His counsel and his terrific sense of humor will be sorely missed. He will always be remembered as a pioneer and innovator in the instruments that led to significant scientific discoveries in the discipline of space physics. We will all remember him for all the things he has done for us and the space physics community at large. Our hearts go out to his wife Robin and family for their loss.


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