Adam P. Showman (1968–2020)

Abstract

This brilliant planetary scientist was the world's expert on the dynamics of hot gas giant atmospheres. Adam P. Showman passed away unexpectedly on March 16, 2020, at his home in Tucson, AZ. His untimely passing has been felt widely in the international planetary science community, which has lost an outstanding theorist, a dedicated teacher of many graduate students, and a sought-after collaborator to a worldwide network of exoplanet astronomers. Adam Showman was born on October 9, 1968 in Palo Alto, CA. He studied physics at Stanford University where he earned a BS in 1991. He earned a PhD at Caltech in 1999, with a dissertation on the atmosphere of Jupiter as well as the geophysics of its largest moon Ganymede. After two short postdoc stints at the University of Louisville and NASA-Ames, Dr. Showman joined the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona as an Assistant Professor in 2001; he was named full Professor in 2012. He was recently named a Galileo Circle Fellow of the University of Arizona (2018) and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (2019).