Louise Gray Young, longtime researcher of spectral absorption properties of planetary atmospheres, died in San Diego, California, on 2 March 2018 at the age of 82. Born on 4 October 1935 in Los Angeles, California, to Frank Dillon of Arizona and Ruth Davis of Michigan, Young received her B.S. (1958) and M.S. degrees (1959) from the University of California at Los Angeles in engineering. She subsequently obtained her Ph.D. in engineering science from the California Institute of Technology.
In 1965, Young joined the engineering faculty at UCLA, before moving to the University of Texas at Austin in 1967, where she became a research associate in astronomy. She next worked as a senior scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory until 1974, then became a research scientist at Texas A&M University. She is remembered for her contributions to the spectroscopic analysis of planetary atmospheres, especially that of Venus, dating from the late 1960s though the mid-1980s.
Young was a fellow of the Optical Society of America since 1976 and a member of the American Astronomical Society, International Astronomical Union, and American Meteorological Society. She served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer from 1969 to 1977.
She is survived by her husband, Andrew T. Young, and their adult children.
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