David H. Bruning

United States

1952-2024

Obituary:

David Bruning had a fifteen year academic career at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside,
which was only part of his 40 year contribution to Astronomy and Physics.
Starting with a B.S. degree in Astronomy and Physics from Arizona in 1973, Dave earned a
Master's in Astrophysics from Colorado in 1977, and a Ph. D. in Astronomy from New Mexico
State in 1981 while simultaneously working as a scientific programmer for Lockheed Electronics.
Post-doc positions at Mt. Wilson, followed by University of Hawaii came next, after which Dave
spent six years as assistant professor at the University of Louisville. These were research
positions, and Dave was very productive, producing 13 publications in journals, 8 papers
presented at meetings and meeting proceedings, and 21 abstracts.
In his work as a research astronomer, Dave made significant and lasting contributions in the
fields of solar and stellar spectroscopy, and with respect to the then-budding searches for
planets around other stars.
His early work involved measuring solar differential rotation; that evolved into his eventual
primary focus on observing the Sun as a star. While at Mount Wilson Observatory, he
investigated stability of the solar spectrum, developing Iodine absorption cells for accurate
wavelength calibrations of stellar spectra. Related work concerned how the exact shapes of
spectral lines change across the disk of the Sun, and how they vary with time. Those line
asymmetries would lead to a better understanding of stellar convection; this would be found to
be important for exo-planet detection. Early on, he also attempted measurement of magnetic
fields on cool stars, another way to understand many aspects of stellar surface activity.
However, this would prove to be yet another noise source making exo-planet detection more
difficult.
As one colleague put it: Dave didn’t shy away from difficult problems!
These investigations preceded more comprehensive global efforts a few decades later:
extrasolar planets were discovered in the mid-1990’s, while current challenges aim at finding
possible analogs to our own Earth around other solar-like stars. For these searches, the main
difficulty today is to precisely understand how the star itself is varying, so that its fluctuations can
be segregated from the small perturbations induced by a possible planet. Here, early work by
Dave remains relevant and was cited in a recent journal article, published around the same time
as his passing (Astronomy & Astrophysics 687, A60, 2024). Other citations point to the ability of stellar asymmetry to illustrate rotation of stars such as Sirius, based on work done at ESO in
Chile.
In the mid-90's Dave's interest in education and the popularization of astronomy dominated
his efforts, and he spent 5 years as associate editor of Astronomy magazine. Starting in 2000,
Dave moved to University of Wisconsin-Parkside, where he rose through positions of Lecturer,
Senior Lecturer, and Distinguished Lecturer to Associate Professor in 2012. His work there
included publishing 24 articles in Mercury, participating in educational research initiatives,
serving on critical committees, teaching physics and astronomy courses at all levels, and
designing and teaching new courses on scientific programming and astronomy in Native
America.
Dave was an outstanding and supportive colleague, and a much loved instructor. His
courses always had high enrollments and outstanding reviews. In addition, Dave advised
several cohorts of physics majors, many of whom went on to graduate school and are now
faculty members in physics all around the world. These people will carry Dave's academic
legacy and passion for science into the future.