RIP: Robert L. Forward

[gridlore]

The intelligent pattern of protoplasm that had been Robert L. Forward
ceased coherent operation on September 21, 2002.

Robert Lull Forward died at home of brain cancer at the age of 70.
Forward was born 15 August 1932 in Geneva, New York. After graduation
from the University of Maryland in 1954 with a BS degree in Physics and
a Second Lieutenant commission in the Air Force, he married Martha Neil
Dodson and served two years stateside during the closing years of the
Korean War. Upon leaving the service Forward was awarded a Hughes
Aircraft Company Graduate Research Fellowship, which he used to obtain a
MS in Applied Physics from UCLA in 1958 and a PhD in Physics from the
University of Maryland in 1965. Forward was one of the early pioneers
in the field of experimental gravitational radiation astronomy. For his
PhD thesis he built and operated the first bar antenna for the detection
of gravitational radiation under the direction of Profs. Weber and
Zipoy. The antenna is now in the Smithsonian Museum.

Forward worked for 31 years at the Hughes Aircraft Company Corporate
Research Laboratories in Malibu, CA in positions of increasing
responsibility until he took early retirement in 1987 to spend more time
on writing novels and his aerospace consulting company business -
Forward Unlimited . During his tenure at Hughes, he received 18
patents, and published numerous papers on experimental gravity
instruments and measurements, including the first paper on using the
normal modes of the Earth to set an upper limit on interstellar
millicycle gravitational radiation; a paper on the details of the
wideband "chirp" signal to be expected from the gravitational collapse
of a binary neutron star pair; and a method for "flattening" spacetime
over a hatbox-sized region in an orbiting microgravity space lab to the
picogravity level.

Forward also published the first paper showing that it was possible to
build and operate a laser interferometer gravitational radiation antenna
that was photon noise limited over the band from 1-20 kHz, and that
further improvements in gravitational strain sensitivity needed only
more laser power and longer lengths in the interferometer arms. The
broadband gravitational strain sensitivity his laser interferometer
antenna reached in 1972 was not bettered for over a decade. Forward
also invented the multidirectional spherical bar antenna for
gravitational radiation, and the rotating cruciform gravity gradiometer
Mass Detector for Lunar Mascon measurements (which Misner, Wheeler &
Thorne pointed out can detect the curvature of spacetime produced by a
fist).

From the time of his retirement from Hughes in 1987 onward, Forward was
a consultant for the Air Force and NASA on advanced space propulsion
concepts, with an emphasis on propulsion methods (lightsail, antimatter,
electrodynamic tether, etc.), that use physical principles other than
chemical or nuclear rockets. In 1992 he formed the company, Tethers
Unlimited, with Dr. Robert P. Hoyt. When he reached 70 he "retired" to
part time consulting and writing.

In addition to over 200 papers and articles, Forward published 11 "hard"
science fiction novels, where the science is as accurate as
possible-consistent with telling a good story. Forward "taught" science
through his novels. His first book, DRAGON'S EGG, expanded upon Frank
Drake's idea of tiny fast-living creatures living on the surface of a
neutron star. Forward called it, "A textbook on neutron star physics
disguised as a novel." The book is often assigned as "extra credit
reading" in beginning astronomy courses. The science in his books has
often been novel enough that many of his fiction books have been
referenced in journal publications as "prior art publications".

Downloads of many of Forward's papers can be obtained by visiting his
web site at: http://www.ForwardUnlimited.com

Hopefully, Bob's spirit, now unburdened by that nuisance called inertia,
has reached lightspeed, and I hope you all will join me in wishing him:

"AD ASTRA, BOB!"