Albert G. Mowbray (1916–2002)

Albert G. Mowbray was born on 23 June 1916. He was the son of Albert Henry Mowbray, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley [UCB], and Elizabeth Gray Mowbray. He had one sister, Mary Elizabeth.

Mowbray did undergraduate and graduate work at UCB. His 1943 PhD. dissertation had to do with the apparent sizes of globular clusters. Mowbray became an observing assistant at Lick Observatory in about 1942; later that year he went to the Perkins Observatory, operated for Ohio Wesleyan University by the Ohio State University [OSU]. Due to the wartime shortage of instructors, he also taught physics at OSU. In 1946 Mowbray joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. By 1948 he lived in Pasadena California, and was a volunteer observer at the Mount Wilson Observatory. Later, until 1956, he was employed by UCB professor Leland Cunningham, a solar-system dynamicist. Mowbray did computations and measured plates for Cunningham. Mowbray joined the physics faculty at San Jose State College (now San José State University) in 1957.

In addition to the AAS, Mowbray was a member of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He died in San Francisco, California, on 21 August 2002.

The kind assistance of George Herbig, Virginia Trimble, and Elizabeth Roemer is acknowledged.