Ron Allen's Home Page at STScI
Ronald J Allen
Science Mission Office
Space Telescope Science Institute
3700 San Martin Drive
Baltimore, MD 21218
Office
605 Bloomberg
410-338-4574
rjallen at stsci.edu
STScI astronomer Ron Allen passed away August 8, 2020. In Ron’s passing, the greater scientific community lost a brilliant research astronomer and deeply respected mentor.
Read more about Ron's life and work.
Brief Biography
Ron Allen is presently a research astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, where he has been on the scientific staff since 1989. He did his undergraduate work in Physics (B.A. Hons. 1962) at the University of Saskatchewan and received his PhD in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967. Ron spent two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the radio astronomy group at the Paris-Meudon Observatory, and in 1969 he joined the research staff at the Kapteyn Laboratory in Groningen, the Netherlands, to work with the newly-commissioned Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope. He was appointed to the faculty of the astronomy department at Groningen University as assistant Lecturer in Radio Astronomy in 1972 and promoted to Professor in 1980. In 1982 Ron served for 3 years as Chairman of the Astronomy Department and Dean of the Subfaculty of Astronomy at Groningen University. In 1985 he went to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana as Professor of Astronomy and Head of Department. Ron moved to STScI as a Full Astronomer in 1989 and has held various management positions in the Institute; he is presently in the Science Mission Office and is responsible for the Hubble and Giacconi Fellowship programs. Ron is also an adjunct Professor and graduate lecturer on "Fourier Optics and Interferometry in Astronomy" at the Johns Hopkins University Physics/Astronomy department. He has served on national research advisory committees in the UK, Sweden, France, Canada, and the Netherlands as well as the USA. His current professional interests include spiral structure and the physics of the interstellar medium in galaxies from radio, optical, and Far-UV observations. His publications in the research literature include 18 invited review papers (first author on 16), more than 100 papers in refereed journals (first author on 33), and more than 66 papers in conferences and the popular press (first author on 24).
Additional links
- Complete CV
- Mosaics of all 81 pointings in the Onsala survey field in HI, OH, and CO
- AAS 223 Poster: Dark Gas in the Galaxy - A blind survey for thermal OH emission in the ISM