Remembering John Porter

"John was a great asset to the hot star community, doing innovative and important theoretical work on circumstellar disks around hot stars. His review article on Be stars, written together with Thomas Rivinius, will stand as one of the landmark recent references in the field. He was also truly one of the "good guys", and his presence will be sorely missed by many of us who had been lucky enough to interact with him over the years."
Karen Bjorkman
U. Toledo

"John Porter was my buddy. He was the kind of friendly, outgoing fellow who makes it enjoyable to be involved with other people in astronomical research: asking questions, thinking of new ideas while remembering old ones, and somehow making the time to actually accomplish something. He had a wonderful sense of humor and never took himself too seriously. He must have had more important business elsewhere, but I'm glad he left us with such a happy sense of expansion."
David McDavid
U. Virginia

"John and I co-presented a focus session at a recent meeting in Johnson City, and there I got to know him as a very affable friend as well as a valuable collaborator. He was always smiling, and had a keen sense of how to simplify difficult topics. I will miss not having the opportunity to interact with him at meetings, our whole community is lessened without him."
Sincerely,
Kenneth Gayley
Univ. of Iowa

"John will be remembered as one of the younger hot star specialists who, through his enthusiasm, outspoken talents and sense of humor, gave all of us this unique feeling of shared enjoyment. His sharp contributions are well documented. His modest, humble and cheerful personality made him unforgettable. People who interacted with John Porter!, are privileged."
Huib Henrichs
U. Amsterdam

"I've learned to know John during the Alicante-Meeting in 1999. I always appreciated his sense of humour, that did not exclude himself or our work. Although we've met in person only at too few conferences, I was in frequent e-mail contact with him, in particular during the time we worked together on the review. Working on this text, I've learned a lot about theory, and I can only hope that my contributions about observational astronomy come close in clarity to the parts he wrote. He was an excellent astronomer, and next to the completed works and contributions he has left us many new ideas to try out and to learn something new about the universe."
Thomas Rivinius
European Southern Observatory

"I'm out of science business for some years now, but still follow what's going on. When I received the message of John's death I was really shocked and sad - I still am. I met John at the IAU Colloquium at Alicante in 1999. I was deeply impressed by his humor and good and friendly nature. At times, when I'm nostalgic and remember some episodes in my life as an astronomer, John and our happy time in Alicante are always a part of it."
Sascha Tubbesing

"I had the great privilege of knowing John for the entire span of my career as an astronomer, beginning as an undergraduate tutee of his, and continuing through to our recent collaboration on an ApJ letter. He walked tall in our community, as an outstanding scientist, a heart-warming entertainer, and a consummate gentleman. I will treasure my memory of him as all of these things, but also as the most genuine of friends, who, with his northern English sensibilities, always told me when I was talking absolute crap."
Rich Townsend
Bartol Research Institute

"Meetings were different when John Porter participated in them. He added life and and his very own but very shareable cheerfulness to the discussions. Even what could have been perceived as a critical or skeptical remark he expressed with a warm and honest smile on his face. There was hardly a contribution to the discussions, be they in the lecture hall or over coffee, in which he did not refer to an amazing wealth of unpublished results and inspiring conjectures, over and above the impressive printed records of his work. Probably, everyone is convinced that professional competence can really unfold only in the presence of matching interpersonal competence. Only few people reach this goal but John was the prototypical example. Meetings will be different without John Porter."
Dietrich Baade
European Southern Observatory

"I had regrettably no chance to meet John Porter personally but I closely followed his studies since the time he entered the field and hoped in a personal interaction. I would like to express my sincere condolences to his family and friends."
Petr Harmanec
Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

"The sad news this week suddenly put the little disappointments, worries, and frustrations of everyday life in perspective. They seem so trivial now. To John's family, friends, and colleagues in the UK; I give you my deepest sympathy. I hope you know that John's clever wit and cheery disposition touched many lives.
"I first met John about 7 years ago, and during the past few years we have been working more and more together. Usually not a week had gone by without some correspondence. It seems like yesterday when he visited Canada and he spent a wonderful evening with my family. It was a hot summers night and we relaxed outside on the front porch at my home. John observed the brightly coloured birds arriving at my bird feeders and he insisted that the birds of Canada must surely be dipped in bright paint and those native to Britain must surely be bleached!
"John was an excellent researcher whose work was always completed in a thoughtful thorough manner. He never once let me down with any request for information, an explanation, or a computation.
"On Tuesday, June 7, 2005, when I arrived at work there was an email in my in-box from John. As I went off to teach my class that morning, I never imagined that I would never have the opportunity to respond. There are so many things I would like to have said to John. I will miss him."
Sincerely,
Carol Jones
University of Western Ontario

"John Porter was widely recognised as one of the most original and creative thinkers in our field. In addition, and above this, he was an excellent colleague and friend. He had the rare gift of being able to discuss the most serious matters with a touch of humour. His loss is a hard blow to our community. Sadly, many wonderful things that John might have helped to discover will now remain hidden for a long time."
Ignacio Negueruela
University of Alicante

"John was my lecturer for "Introduction to Stellar Astrophysics" when I was an undergrad at JMU/Liverpool University. He really fired my enthusiasm for what went on in stars and brought the whole subject to life for me. Although I am no longer directly involved in Astrophysics, I can still have intelligent conversations with my Astrophysics colleagues in my department and it's mainly thanks to what John taught me! He will be sadly missed."
Lesley Watters (grad student)
Dept of Physics and Astronomy
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario

"Besides his research and teaching activities, John has been also member of the Organizing Committee of the IAU Working Group "Active B Stars" since 2000. We exchanged many e-mails particularly between 2000 and 2003, when I chaired the Committee. It was always pleasure to get John's messages and views - informal and constructive. John did always his best to help, but - like at the conferences - in a very modest way and without emphasizing his personality. Often he even commented his own contribution with his natural humor.
"When we were completing the SOC for the Sapporo meeting, John was among the first candidates but he stepped back before the elections, saying that some colleagues already in the SOC can cover his field. We were all looking forward to his invited review talk in Sapporo this September. His talk will remain one of our unrealized dreams forever. We will miss him in Sapporo as well as in our everyday work in the future. John was not only an excellent scientist and teacher, but also the kind and modest man. One of those, who make the present world of the hard competition softer and more friendly. I will keep my deepest respect to his memory."
Stanislav Stefl
European Southern Observatory, Chile

"When John died 2 weeks ago my family were all so shocked that we didn't know what to do. Slowly, we started finding out things about John we had not previously been aware of.
"His physics was far removed from anything that we could understand and I, for one, didn't appreciate what he was up to and chose to talk about other things at family gatherings. It's been a real eye opener to read the tributes posed on your web site (all the family have been to read them). I sat one night going through the tributes strumming the acoustic guitar that John got when he started learning at school when the guitar was almost as big as he was. We printed them off and displayed them at his wake along with some of our favourite photographs. It still seems that the funeral was for someone else.
"So, thank everyone from the family for their kind remarks - it did help. We will always miss him - I have run out of words...."
Regards,
Dave Porter

"I never had the privilege of directly collaborating with John on a project, but interacted with him many times through e-mail, especially concerning his contributions to the Be Star Newsletter. I will miss his insightful comments that were usually presented in a cordial air. As others who commented above, I feel that progress in the subdiscipline of activity in B stars will be slowed until another person like John Porter emerges in the community."
Gerrie Peters
Space Sciences Center
University of Southern California

"As current chair of the IAU Working Group on Active B-Stars, I feel I should try to express somehow the collective sense of personal and scientific loss our community feels at John Porter's sudden and tragic passing.
"In the very nice web collection put together by the editors of our newsletter, many have already added their personal reflections, citing also the many ways John contributed to our community, from the gentle humor shared at conferences, to the sense of perspective given to deliberations of our Organizing Committee. Several noted his many insightful papers and reviews, especially the outstanding invited summary he and Rivi wrote to promote a positive profile for our field. Others have expressed also how much we will miss his expected future contributions, most immediately the invited talk he will never give at the upcoming meeting in Sapporo, but extending further to the numerous seeds and sprouts of ideas he planted around so many of us, which we now will have to nurture without benefit of his good common sense on when to fertilize, and when to prune.
"In reading these various reflections I am struck by how the individual experiences echo common themes centered on John's many admirable qualities. To me perhaps most remarkable was the balance he brought to both his personal and professional life, with an ability to synthesize into a coherent whole what might seem like opposing traits. He had, as noted, a keen sense of humor; yet he took quite seriously his duties as a scientist and teacher, to seek out the nature's truths, and share freely his insights with students and colleagues alike. He had an almost boundless curiosity; yet he managed to bring focus and coherence to his research program. He was inventive and creative, open to new ideas in himself and others; yet he retained a healthy skepticism that allowed him to detect and filter out weak arguments and flimsy evidence. He was humble and unassuming; yet he had the air of easy self-confidence of someone comfortable in his own skin.
"Quite apart from the common stereotypes, success in science (as in life) is built upon such synthesis. And so even beyond his many individual contributions to our community, it seems we all owe John even more for his example, on how to be better scientists, and on just how to be."
Stan Owocki