Remembering John Brown

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John C Brown (1947-2019)

John Brown passed away unexpectedly on 16 November 2019, a great sadness to all who knew him. His many contributions to solar physics, for instance the thick target model of flare phenomena, were highly influential 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. This particular topic spans the whole of John's research career and combines a technical side with philosophical thinking about the character of data and the limits on what one can deduce from them.


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. The flux of photons emitted by a population of electrons in a medium is given by Failed to parse (PNG conversion failed; check for correct installation of latex, dvips, gs, and convert): F(\epsilon) = \int_\epsilon^\infty F(E) \frac{\mathrm{d}\sigma}{\mathrm{d}\epsilon}(E,\epsilon) \mathrm{d}E

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