My parents taught me the value of a good education. My studies at the state universities of Michigan and Colorado and postgraduate studies at the University of Utrecht built on an interest in astronomy that dated back to high school. These institutions enabled me to have a rewarding fifty-year career focused on the physics of the Sun. My work combined research and education at the High Altitude Observatory, the University of Utrecht, the Sacramento Peak Observatory, the University of California San Diego, the University of Hawaii, and Montana State University. My professional interests ranged from spectroscopic diagnostics and radiative transfer, especially of the flaring solar chromosphere, to the helicity of magnetic fields of active regions in the chromosphere, corona, and interplanetary medium, part of what is now called heliophysics and space weather. I am honored to have been recognized for my efforts as a scientific leader, mentor, and teacher. I am lucky to have lived at a time when access to space led the field of solar physics to grow dramatically, including global studies of solar activity, the heliosphere, and space weather.
Keywords: Flares, dynamics; Helicity, magnetic; Magnetic fields, corona.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022.