Steve Keil and Mark Giampapa
After 15 years with NSO, Doug Rabin left in July to take on a new position as the Solar Branch Chief at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
During his tenure at NSO, Doug made many important scientific and organizational contributions. Chief among these was Doug's creation of a strong infrared program that revitalized the McMath-Pierce telescope. Doug's leadership in the application of modern IR array systems to solar observations opened up new regimes in the high-precision study of the solar magnetic field and a new view of the solar chromosphere. His community activity in this area included organizing the IAU Infrared Solar Physics Symposium. Furthermore, Doug left NSO with a firm foundation for a major step forward in infrared solar research using a large format ALADDIN array.
Doug also laid the groundwork for a program for extracting useful information from the synoptic magnetic field archive of KPVT data. He stimulated a rigorous look at the data and what should be done to maximize useful science data products. Doug subsequently organized the 1997 NSO Summer Workshop on Synoptic Solar Physics and served as a guiding hand behind the idea of SOLIS.
At a critical juncture in the history of NSO, Doug served as Acting Director for the better part of FY 1996 and did a uniformly praised, outstanding job.
NSO is grateful to Doug Rabin for all his contributions to the Observatory and to solar science. We wish him the best as he faces new challenges and new opportunities at NASA.