David Hall Bruning (1952-2024)

David Hall Bruning was born on Wednesday, May 7, 1952, in Elgin, Illinois and died in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin on Thursday, May 9, 2024. He was 72.

David (“Dave”) Bruning had a 15-year academic career at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, which was only part of his 40-year contribution to Astronomy and Physics.

Following a B.S. degree in Astronomy and Physics from Arizona in 1973, Dave earned a Master's in Astrophysics from Colorado in 1977. He then completed a Ph.D. in Astronomy at New Mexico State in 1981 while simultaneously working as a scientific programmer for Lockheed Electronics. Post-doc positions at Mt. Wilson, followed by University of Hawaii came next, after which Dave spent six years as assistant professor at the University of Louisville. These were research positions, and Dave was very productive, producing 13 publications in journals, 8 papers presented at meetings and meeting proceedings, and 21 abstracts.

In his work as a research astronomer, Dave made significant and lasting contributions in the fields of solar and stellar spectroscopy, relevant to the then-budding searches for planets around other stars.

His earliest work involved measuring solar differential rotation; that evolved into his eventual primary focus on observing the Sun as a star. While at Mount Wilson Observatory, he investigated stability of the solar spectrum, developing Iodine absorption cells for accurate wavelength calibrations of stellar spectra. In related work, he studied how the exact shapes of spectral lines change across the disk of the Sun, and how they vary with time. Those line asymmetries would lead to a better understanding of stellar convection, which later would be found to be important for exo-planet detection. Early on, he also attempted measurement of magnetic fields on cool stars, another way to understand many aspects of stellar surface activity. However, this would prove to be yet another noise source, making exo-planet detection more difficult.

As one colleague put it: Dave didn’t shy away from difficult problems!

These investigations preceded more comprehensive global efforts a few decades later: extrasolar planets were discovered in the mid-1990’s, while current challenges aim at finding possible analogs to our own Earth around other solar-like stars. For these searches, the main difficulty today is to precisely understand how the star itself is varying, so that its fluctuations can be segregated from the small perturbations induced by a possible planet. Here, early work by Dave remains relevant and was cited in a recent journal article, published around the same time as his passing (Astronomy & Astrophysics 687, A60, 2024). Other citations point to the use of stellar absorption line asymmetries to measure rotation of stars such as Sirius, based on work done at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

In the mid-90's Dave's interest in education and the popularization of astronomy dominated his efforts, and he spent five years as associate editor of Astronomy magazine. In 2000, Dave moved to University of Wisconsin-Parkside, where he rose through positions of Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Distinguished Lecturer to Associate Professor in 2012. His work there included the publication of 24 articles in Mercury, participating in educational research initiatives, serving on critical committees, teaching physics and astronomy courses at all levels, and designing and teaching new courses on scientific programming and astronomy for Native Americans.

Dave was an outstanding and supportive colleague, and a much-loved instructor. His courses always had high enrollments and outstanding reviews. In addition, Dave advised several cohorts of physics majors, many of whom went on to graduate school and are now faculty members in physics departments all around the world. These people will carry Dave's academic legacy and passion for science into the future.

Bruning’s AstroGen entry