Alan M. Title
The solar physicist was a driving force behind many of the most influential scientific instruments for studying the Sun.
Renowned solar physicist Dr. Alan Title, a longtime resident of Palo Alto, California, passed away on 24 March 2026 at age 88. He was a driving force behind many of the most influential scientific instruments for studying the Sun.
Born and raised in West Los Angeles, Alan was the son of Silvia Title (born Silvia Klein) and her husband Charles Title, a pharmacist. Alan earned his BA in mathematics from UCLA and attended graduate school for a year at Columbia, then transferred to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). There, as a PhD student of longtime Caltech physicist Prof. Robert Leighton, he participated in the development and implementation of solar instrumentation used at the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains above Pasadena. Alan notably served as a teaching assistant in an undergraduate physics course in development by Prof. Richard Feynman that eventually formed the basis of the now-legendary series of introductory physics texts The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Alan received his PhD in physics from Caltech in 1966. During a postdoctoral research fellowship at Harvard, he met the astrophysicist who would become his wife, Dr. Ruth Peterson.
After returning to California to become the leader of the Lockheed Solar Observatory at Rye Canyon in Santa Clarita, Alan moved with his research group in 1976 to the facility that eventually became the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto. Over the course of his more than fifty-year career at Lockheed Martin, Alan helped lead and shape a remarkable series of missions and instruments that captured many types of high-resolution images of the Sun, including the H-alpha Telescopes on board the Skylab space station, the Solar Optical Universal Polarimeter on board the modular laboratory SpaceLab 2, and the space-based solar observation systems SOHO/MDI, TRACE, Hinode/SOT, SDO/AIA, SDO/HMI, and IRIS. Alan’s projects transformed human understanding of the solar atmosphere and magnetic activity, and they continue to define the way the Sun is observed today.
Alan’s wide-ranging body of work led to his election as a member of both the National Academy of Engineering (in 2003) and the National Academy of Sciences (in 2004). He received the prestigious George Ellery Hale Prize from the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society (in 2001), the John Adam Fleming Medal of the American Geophysical Union (in 2011), and the Space Science Award from the Committee on Space Research (in 2022), among many other awards too numerous to list here. He was also inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame (in 2010).
A gifted and generous mentor, Alan had a unique ability to bring people together, to see the path forward in complex problems, and to inspire those around him to do their best work. He traveled widely and was a connoisseur of automobiles, Native American ceramics, European glassware, and fine furniture and carpets. He was a devoted husband to Ruth, who survives him, and who remembers his kindness above all. He was predeceased by his sister Marjorie Ford and her husband John Ford but is survived by their children, Michael Ford and Maya Ford. He is also survived by his sister Dr. Barbara Klein, her husband Paul Macirowski, and Barbara’s children Richard Schave and Elizabeth Schave Sills.
Alan will be deeply missed by his family, friends, colleagues, and the international solar physics community. Donations in Alan’s memory can be made to the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society at https://spd.aas.org/donate-to-the-spd/ by choosing “SPD Division Contribution,” ticking the box “Dedicate this gift,” and entering Alan’s name.
