Allan J. Willis

United Kingdom

1951-2018

Obituary:

Allan Willis studied for a BSc in Astronomy at UCL starting 1970, and was to remain for the rest of his working life. For his PhD he worked on some of the earliest ultraviolet spectra of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars, obtained with the S2/68 experiment on the TD-1 spacecraft. Awarded his PhD in 1976, he went on to hold posts as an SERC Postdoctoral Research Assistant (1976-79), SERC Advanced Research Fellow (1979-84), and Royal Society University Research Fellow (1984-92). He was promoted to Reader in 1990, and Professor in 1995.

Throughout his career his research continued to revolve principally around UV spectroscopy of WR stars, generating almost 100 refereed-journal publications before he took early retirement at the end of the 2005/6 academic year. As well as supervising a series of PhD students, many of whom have themselves gone on to successful academic careers, he held enabling roles at national and international level, and was on the Scientific Organizing Committees of a string of IAU Symposia on hot, massive stars.

Allan passed away on Nov 3 2018, some two and a half years after being diagnosed with inoperable cancer.