Richard Head

Richard M. Head PhD. Oct. 24, 1919 - Jan. 20, 2006. Richard M. Head, internationally renowned authority on sunspot and solar flare activity and their influence on the earth's atmosphere, has passed away at his residence in Scottsdale, after months of battling liver cancer. As a youth, his great love of the outdoors was cemented by his association with Harry James, one of the founders of the Sierra Club and an authority on the Hopi Indians. Richard and his brother Ben were among the first Caucasians officially adopted into the Hopi Nation. He found it remarkable and more than a little ironic, considering his life's work that the official Hopi name given him was "Rays-of-the-Sun Bear". His early academic career is notable for setting a record of five degrees awarded in one year at the prestigious California Institute of Technology. Due to an unusual sequence of events (nine months in traction from an auto accident and a change in the fiscal year), it is a record that may never be broken. He was conversant in six languages, translating numerous Russian scientific papers into English over the years. His longtime connection to the Monterey Peninsula dates back to 1947. He was one of the first faculty members to come here when the Naval Academy in Annapolis moved their graduate division and reestablished it at the old Hotel Del Monte (now known as the Naval Postgraduate School). He was a Professor in the Dept of Aeronautical Engineering until the early 1960's when he accepted the position of Assistant Director of NASA in Wash DC. It was there, inhis capacity as Director of Long Range Planning and Evaluation that his love of all things solar blossomed. Not only was he in charge of heat-shield design for all the Apollo missions, but his forecasts of solar flare activity also determined the "windows" in which it was safest to launch the missions. It was also during this time that he served as Program Director for the SST (supersonic transport) in conjunction with Boeing. The SST was eventually shelved in favor of the Concorde design. Tiring of increasing administrative duties, he was appointed to a new position created just for him...Chief Scientist, which allowed him to return to pure research at a special NASA facility in Cambridge, Mass. It was here that he developed a fascinating sideline of artwork he patented and dubbed "Hallucinart", an optical illusion type of computer-generated visual based on patterns generated by solar winds around heat shields. After some years refining his formulas, Dr. Head retired from NASA, moved to Vermont and founded Solar/Environmental Sciences, a consulting company whose principal client became Yankee Publications, the people behind the original Old Farmer's Almanac. There he enjoyed great success and acclaim under the pseudonym Abe Weatherwise, basing his Ionospheric long range weather forecasts and predictions on his sunspot research with an 87% success rate. He is survived by his beloved wife Jeannine, of Montreal and Scottsdale, former wife Isabel, son Timothy (Madeleine) Head and grandson Alec, of Carmeland daughter Terry (Gordon) McCollum and grandsons Matthew and Travis of South Lake Tahoe.