Posted through the URSI-Commission-G Mailing List: Sad News on Dr. Jules Aarons

[Paul Cannon]

Dear Colleagues,

It is with sadness that I report Dr. Jules Aarons passed away on Friday, 21
November 2008.

Dr. Aarons was one of the original members and convenors of the Beacon
Satellite Studies Group.  His opening address at BSS 2007 was one of the
highlights of the symposium.

Dr. Aarons will be missed by all.

A copy of the Boston Globe article on Dr. Aarons is appended at the base of
the email.

Sincerely,

Patricia Doherty
Beacon Satellite Studies Group Co-Chair 

*****************************
Patricia H. Doherty
Director/Senior Scientist
Institute for Scientific Research
Boston College
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467

Ph: 617-552-8767
Fax: 617-552-2818
Email: dohertpd at bc.edu
_______________________________________________________________________
The Boston Globe
Jules Aarons, 87, renowned space physicist and documentary photographer
By Mark Feeney
Globe Staff / November 24, 2008

Jules Aarons, a Boston University physicist who was an internationally known
expert in the study of radio-wave propagation and an acclaimed photographer
whose work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, New
York's Museum of Modern Art, and Paris's Bibliotheque Nationale, died Friday
at his home in Newton after battling congestive heart failure. He was 87.

Dr. Aarons worked for many years as a senior scientist at the Air Force
Geophysics Research Laboratory at Hanscom Field in Bedford. He joined the
faculty at Boston University in 1981, the year he retired from the
geophysics laboratory, and helped establish Boston University's Center for
Space Physics in 1987.

"He was an extremely warm and unpretentious person,'' said Michael Mendillo,
a Boston University astronomy professor who had coffee and pastries on
Friday with Dr. Aarons at his home before he died during an afternoon nap.
"He knew he was an accomplished person, but he never talked about himself.''

A pioneer in space physics, Dr. Aarons contributed to advances in satellite
and global positioning technology. "Essentially, I tried to understand the
effects of the earth's atmosphere on radio waves,'' he said once, describing
his scientific work.

>From 1980 to 1983, he was chairman of the International Radio Science
Union's Commission on Ionospheric Radio Wave Propagation.

According to the National Science Foundation's Sunanda Basu, Dr. Aarons "was
a pioneer in beacon satellite studies of the ionosphere.'' His name, Basu
said, "has now become synonymous with the field of ionospheric
scintillations.''

Dr. Aarons's photographs are notable for their liveliness, informality, and
emotional warmth. He excelled at street photography: casual documentary
images of urban life. "My basic approach to street portraits was to avoid
intruding on the scene,'' he said. He began taking photographs while an
undergraduate at the City College of New York.

The Boston Public Library, whose print department has an extensive
collection of his photographs, held a one-man show of his work in 1999,
"Into the Streets.'' Dr. Aarons also had one-man shows at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, 1949; the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine, and
the Institute of Contemporary Art, both 1951; the George Eastman House in
Rochester, N.Y., 1958; and the DeCordova Museum
and Sculpture Park, 1951 and 2003.

"I knew that the dynamics of people whose social relationships involved
their neighbors and the streets could be a source of creativity,'' Dr.
Aarons said.

He gravitated to Boston's old West End, before urban renewal demolished much
of the neighborhood, and then to the North End. He visited with his camera,
a double-lens Rolleiflex, on late afternoons and weekends.

"In 1947, I began to take black-and-white photographs with the aim to
document Boston, its streets and its people, while also developing my own
style. I resolved to capture the day-to-day life experiences of the people,
avoiding scenes of poverty.''

Among photographers who influenced him were Sid Grossman, with whom he
briefly studied, Lisette Model, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Dr. Aarons was born in the Bronx, N.Y. His father worked in the garment
industry. After graduating from the City College of New York in 1942, he
served in the Army Signal Corps, where he became interested in electronics.

After the war, he went to work at Hanscom and earned a master's degree in
physics from Boston University in 1949. He went to Paris on a Fulbright
grant in 1953 and earned his doctorate at the University of Paris.

Dr. Aarons used his time in France to photograph and study. He would
continue to use his scientific career to contribute to his photography.
Going to professional conferences, he made a point of bringing along his
camera.

Thus his work includes images taken in Western Europe, India, Japan, South
America, Israel, and Puerto Rico.

Dr. Aarons printed his own photographs. His eyes developed an intolerance to
darkroom chemicals, which caused him to abandon photography in 1981.

One of his sons, Philip E. of New York, said in an interview yesterday that
Dr. Aarons struck a perfect balance among his devotions to science,
photography, and family.

"He was a tremendously loving father and grandfather,'' Philip said.

Dr. Aarons was predeceased by his wife, Jeanette (Lampert), whom he married
in 1944.

In addition to his son, Philip, Dr. Aarons leaves another son, Herbert Gene
of Salinas, Calif., and three grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held 11 a.m. today in the Brezniak-Rodman Chapel,
West Newton. Burial will be in Sharon Memorial Park in Sharon.

Globe reporter James Vaznis and Globe correspondent Emily Canal contributed
to this obituary.
C Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.


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