Department mourns loss of Research Professor A. G. Davis Philip

Research professor A. G. Davis Philip, 87, died peacefully at the Capital Living Nursing and Rehabilitation Center on March 28, 2016. He received his BS in Physics from Union College; MS in Astronomy from New Mexico State University; and his PhD in Astronomy from Case Institute of Technology. He taught at the University of New Mexico and SUNY at Albany and joined Union as a research professor in the 1970’s. He is best known for his work on globular clusters,and his work was published in over 60 referred scientific journal articles and numerous conference proceedings. He organized and chaired many meetings in the field of astronomy and edited and published the proceedings. He was a Visiting Fellow at Yale, a Visiting Astronomer at Moletai Observatory (Lithuania), Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (Arizona), and the CASLEO Observatory (Argentina). He was the first American astronomer to use the 6-meter telescope at the Special Astrophysical Observatory in Russia in 1980 (the largest telescope in the world at the time). He was a founder and longtime Secretary and Treasurer of the New York Astronomical Corporation and Astronomical Society of New York and for 10 years he administered the American Astronomical Society’s Harlow Shapley Visiting Lectureships program, which sends astronomers to colleges to spread the excitement of modern astronomy and astrophysics and encourage students to pursue a career in astronomy. Further details may be found in Dave’s obituary.