EAO/JCMT staff are deeply saddened by the loss of Professor Richard Hills (1945-2022). Professor Richard Hills of the University of Cambridge was a leading radio astronomer and instrumentalist in the era of millimeter wave and submillimeter wave astronomy. He was the original project scientist for the JCMT and ensured the successful construction of the JCMT and the development of its suite of forefront instrumentation. He was also the project scientist for ALMA during its construction phase. Richard’s expertise and wise leadership is deeply appreciated across many fields of astronomy. At the time of the construction of the JCMT, he also served on the advisory board of the SMA. His influences on the development of submillimeter astronomy are everywhere, and continues at the JCMT as the chair of the committee which studied the options for the next generation of JCMT instruments.
Prof Richard Hills, University of Cambridge. Picture: Royal Society
The observatory staff recommend anyone wishing to read past JCMT newsletter articles to visit https://www.eaobservatory.org/jcmt/public/newsletter/ Of note we recommend jcmt-n36.pdf (see page 6), but contributions from Richard are in a number of these stretching back to jcmtukirt1991spring.pdf (see page 7).