The Interesting Life of Alex Dessler

I don't post much personal stuff on Twitter, but my father died last weekend so I thought I would tell you about his interesting life. A 🧵:

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023

Alex Dessler was born in 1928 and grew up during the Great Depression. By his own admission, after high school he as lazy and directionless and he got fired from many jobs. Eventually, his mother threatened to kick him out of the house unless he joined the Navy.

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023

In the Navy, he trained as a radar technician. He had lots of good naval stories; here he is talking about having to paint the radar on the destroyer he was stationed on. It's from an oral history I did with him in the late 2000s. pic.twitter.com/MV1FAnBg4H

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023

Working on the radar sparked his passion for physics, and he eventually earned a BS from Caltech and a Ph.D. from Duke University. After graduation, he took a job as a section head at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company.

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023

This was two years before Sputnik, so when Sputnik started the space race, my father was perfectly positioned to become a leader in space physics.

It was, he would acknowledge, one of the many lucky breaks he had in his life.

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023

Here he is talking about what he did the day after Sputnik was launched & how he calculated how large the launch vehicle's upper stage was. pic.twitter.com/9mn5A9Yr9Q

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023

He had a lot of experiences living through the space race. Here is a great story about seeing some rocket engine tests. pic.twitter.com/Bc6aY6u5uU

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023

People new little about space at that time, so every result was a breakthrough. For me today, it's hard to imagine what it must have been like. Here's a paper he wrote with Gene Parker (of Parker Space Probe fame) where they first worked out the details of geomagnetic storms. pic.twitter.com/LnBGhxk0Mj

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023

After Kennedy's speech at Rice in 1962, where JFK said "We choose to go to the moon", Rice wanted to get into the space game. So Pres. Pitzer asked my father to form a Dept. of Space Science, the first of its kind in the nation. He was 35. https://t.co/4CQsSF0sB0

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023

It was another lucky break. He stayed in the Department for 30 years, including 14 as chairman. He also spent four years as director of the Space Science Lab at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023

He really had his pulse on science. He's the one that told me, in 1987, that environmental science was going to be big and I should focus my graduate studies on that. It was a pretty good call.

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023

He was very well known in geophysics. When I would go to AGU meetings in the 1990s, I cannot count how many times people would call me Alex by mistake. When I was a postdoc at GSFC, there was one person (Hans Mayr) who always referred to me as "Young Dessler".

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023

In fact, it still sometimes happens, usually with the "old timers". pic.twitter.com/u5yZTV8kBi

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023

I could go on about him and his many accomplishments in his life. I'll just end by saying he was a good dad and I'll miss him.

— Andrew Dessler (@AndrewDessler) April 12, 2023