Remembering John Brown

From RHESSI Wiki

John C Brown (1947-2019)

John Brown passed away unexpectedly on 16 November 2019, a great sadness to all who knew him. He was of course a major figure in solar physics, a major architect of the thick target model of flare phenomena, and we were prompted to think about some of the big themes of his research career. In this nugget we look at one of those big themes, inverse problems in astrophysics.

Brown(1971)

John's first paper was published in 1971. As of 22 November 2019, ADS says it has been cited 889 times. It introduced several ideas that became key to the study of flares and their X-radiation. A previous nugget dealt with the thick target model. Another big new idea was the possibility of "inverting" observed X-ray spectra to deduce the energy distribution of the emitting electrons.