Alan Burgess

Alan Burgess during his retirement celebrations, held in Cambridge, July 2001, with his grandson and the book he received as a present.

It is with great sadness that I inform you of the sudden death of Alan Burgess. He died unexpectedly, in his sleep, at home, having spent Boxing Day with his family.

Alan Burgess was a superb physicist and an excellent teacher. He carried out some fundamental calculations on di-electronic recombination while a post-doc at UCL, in Prof Mike Seaton's group. These calculations related directly to our knowledge and understanding of the high temperature of the solar corona. He was well known by many in the solar physics community, particularly during the 1980's when we had the 'QUACS' meetings. The Burgess and Tully assessment method has been fundamental to the data storage in CHIANTI.

Until his retirement, Alan was head of the Atomic and Astro-physics group at DAMTP, University of Cambridge. He was an inspiration and mentor to many research students, who are now leaders in their research fields. He was also held in great affection and respect by those colleagues who knew him and worked with him.

Our thoughts are with his family at this time of deep sadness. His funeral will be held on Friday, 13th Jan.

Helen Mason

More pictures of the July 2001 workshop in honour of Alan.

Alan and his family

Mike Seaton with Alan Burgess at DAMTP

The Dinner

From the left: Marita Chidichimo, a former Ph Student of Alan, no longer with us; John Tully, a good friend and colleague of Alan; Helen Mason.

Pictures during Helen Mason workshop

Carole Jordan, Hugh Summers, Alan Burgess and Nigel Badnell

Alan Burgess, Nigel Badnell and Alan Gabriel

Hugh Summers, Alan Burgess, Nigel Badnell and Giulio Del Zanna

Atomic physics group

Atomic physics plays a key role in astrophysics as astronomers' only information about a particular object comes through the light that it emits, and this light arises through atomic transitions. The two major topics tackled by our group are thus:

• Performing atomic physics calculations that will be useful to astronomers. This group has played a key role in developing and maintaining CHIANTI, a Database for Astrophysical Emission Line Spectroscopy.
• Using atomic data to interpret astronomical observations.

The main astronomical body that we study is the Sun and, in particular, the hot atmosphere of the Sun called the corona. The best parts of the electromagnetic spectrum to study the corona are the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and X-rays.

The EUV is an excellent region to perform spectroscopy and a lot of effort has been devoted in analysing and interpreting solar spectra from Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) aboard the Japanese/UK/USA mission HINODE formerly known as SOLAR-B.

The group is also involved in the Iron Project and The UK APAP Network . The goal of this project is to compute, on a large scale, electron excitation cross sections and rates of astrophysical and technological importance, using the most reliable procedures currently available.