Alan Barry Greenfield

Dr. Alan Barry Greenfield, 63, of Bellevue, Washington passed away in Seattle on Wednesday June 25, 2025 following a valiant battle against pancreatic cancer. Dr. Greenfield was born on Aug. 5, 1961 in Bethpage, New York to parents, Raymond Greenfield, a dentist/orthodontist, and Sylvia (Geller), who had been a hospital bacteriologist. He is survived by his loving wife of 27 years, Lucy (Luo), his adoring daughter Katie of Chicago, Illinois, and his brother Michael and sister-in-law, Valery Terwilliger, of Tours, France.

Alan grew up in Amityville, New York, where he was a brilliant student from an early age. He attended the Amityville Memorial High School and graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1979. He went on to Swarthmore College (Pennsylvania), initially focused on chemistry, was part of the honors college, and later settled on physics as his preferred major, earning a B.A. degree in 1983. Alan moved to the west coast after graduation, enrolled as a graduate student in physics at UCLA and soon gained admission to the school's doctoral program.

While at UCLA he immersed himself in several subjects, first general plasma physics and then specifically wave motion and its resonance in plasmas close to absolute zero, where such activity could be easily examined owing to its reduced speed and also help model certain astronomical phenomena. Still in the domain of wave motion, he studied coupled oscillators in one- and two-dimensional systems and probed their non-linear and chaotic properties. He published a landmark article on this last topic, which had important applications to acoustics, and was awarded the PhD for his dissertation 'Localization of stable and chaotic non-propagating structures in non-linear mesoscopic lattices', supervised by Professor Seth Putterman. Along the way to his degree he served as both a research and teaching assistant in the Physics Department, and then as a computing consultant for the Humanities at UCLA.

Alan branched out to the biomedical world while still a PhD student and for several years afterward, working as a research associate for Professor Vicente Honrubia in the UCLA Medical School (Department of Head and Neck Surgery). This stint concentrated on the vestibular sense (gravity, motion and equilibrium) in humans, and in marine invertebrates as well, and involved contracts with the Defense Department, which was interested in learning how jet fighter pilots respond to the forces they experience in flight maneuvers. In this context, Alan and Vicente made several trips to air force bases at undisclosed locations in the southeastern US.

Eventually the private sector beckoned, and Alan moved to the Bay Area in 1997 and gained employment as a software engineer for several small to medium sized companies working on mathematical modeling, biomedical applications, genomics and security. In 2004 he made his move to the corporate realm, joining Juniper Networks, where he remained until retiring in 2020. He successively held posts of engineering manager, senior engineering manager, service manager and senior service manager, and was given the responsibility for all of Juniper's contracts in the south-central US. Alan continued to work with Juniper after he and his immediate family moved to Bellevue, Washington in 2016.

Alan's move to the Bay Area back in 1997 was motivated by Lucy Luo. Lucy and Alan married in 1998 whereupon he fully integrated himself within her extended family, who had recently immigrated from mainland China. It was in this multi-generational household that Alan was truly in his element. Experiencing a real ephiphany, he embraced family life to its fullest and maintained a 'work-life balance' at all times. His family sparked new interests, Chinese culture from Lucy and Lucy's mother and brother, art from his daughter - always the apple of his eye. He came to love animals, and at last count the household had adopted 3 cats and 1 dog. A quintessential renaissance person, he was equally at ease and knowledgeable discussing the physics of oscillator systems, the living world and the imminent environmental crises, politics, history both ancient and modern, language and art.

Most of all, Alan was inspired when helping people, whether in his family or work. He lent his advanced computer expertise to help several facets of my genealogical project tracing our Eastern European Jewish ancestry to the 18th century, and it was similar when assisting Juniper Networks clients. Alan is remembered best for his kindness and overall good nature, his wit and humor. He was the ultimate connoisseur of Jackie Gleason classics, notably the Honeymooners, and could recite some episodes by heart. If there was ever a cult leader in that niche, he was it.



Alan was interred in the Gan Shalom Cemetery in Briones, California on June 29, 2025 following a Jewish graveside service. He will be missed greatly by all who knew him.

Michael D. Greenfield

Tours, France