Professor Gloeckler Remebers
Dr. John Cain of the
Space Physics Research Group

John Cain, a key member for many years of the Space Physics Research Group in the Department of Physics, University of Maryland , died unexpectedly October 10, 2004 at age 64. John was involved in all of the Group's instrument development efforts, including the mechanical design of particle sensing instruments for the Voyager and Ulysses space missions, numerous instruments on board earth orbiting spacecraft and on the MESSENGER spacecraft that will orbit Mercury.

Born in New York , NY on November 21 1940, John studied mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland . Upon receiving his Master's degree he joined the University's newly formed Space Physics Group in 1967 to design and fabricate a satellite instrument to measure the energy and charge of low energy particles in space. The first University of Maryland instrument was launched in 1972 on the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform, IMP 7 earth orbiting satellite. The Electrostatic Energy-Charge Analyzer was the first in a long series of spacecraft instruments that John had a major role in developing. After retiring from Maryland in 1998, John Cain continued as a consultant for the Maryland Group and for the Solar and Heliospheric Research Group at the University of Michigan where, in collaboration with the University of Maryland , he helped to design and build the Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer for the NASA MESSENGER mission to Mercury launched last August.

Usually engineers are a conservative bunch and will quickly tell you what is not possible. Not so with John. No matter what unconventional concepts that came up for an instrument, he would spring to the challenge of implementing them. It is this spirit that made it possible for the University of Maryland to develop the Solar Wind Ion Composition Spectrometer or SWICS for the Ulysses solar polar mission. The instrument would measure solar wind composition, something never done before and required a host of new technologies, including ultra-thin carbon foils and ultra-high voltages.

Expert scientists said such an instrument could not be built, especially given a 10-lb weight limit. Yet, John persisted and solved each and every on of the many mechanical problems. SWICS was launched on October 6, 1990 by the space shuttle, and, as its sister instrument on the Advanced Composition Explorer ACE launched in 1997, has operated flawlessly ever since. The science and discoveries from these two instruments alone have been enormous.

There were many other instruments to which John's contributions were essential: These were on board spacecraft that visited distant places in the solar system, flew by most of the planets as well as several comets.

Students were always a part of the work that John did; he thought it was one of the roles of a university to involve students, giving them the opportunity to learn by doing. He took mentorship very seriously passing his methods on to his students without hesitation. He believed in a hands-on approach, offering assistance only when the student ran out of blind alleys. In this way he inspired and nurtured the next generation of scientists and engineers, a legacy for tomorrow. Many of his students stayed in contact with him long after they graduated.

John was a tenacious individual, both in his career and in life, a characteristic that his friends and associates relied upon. He became the “go-to” man for difficult engineering tasks, which he invariably solved. He also refused to be worn down, seemingly having an inexhaustible supply of energy. For example, there were times when he was just getting into high gear at 5:00 p.m. on Friday (to the consternation of those that he expected to work the same hours). In a similar vein, if he thought an issue was important, he would never give up on it, whether it was a technical issue, or a more personal one, such as parking at the university.

The development of instrumentation for space physics is often a collaborative effort, so scientists and engineers from the University of Maryland, Goddard Space Flight Center, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the University of Arizona, the University of Michigan, the University of New Hampshire, the Technical University of Braunschweig (Germany), the Max Plank Institutes at Garching and Lindau (Germany), and the University of Berne (Switzerland) knew John as a talented engineer who was enthusiastic about his work, and they will miss him.

John was an avid gun enthusiast and outdoorsman, had an interest in gardening, and always tried to be of help to others in any way he could.

He is survived by his sister and brother-in-law, Mary and Douglas Hinely of Rockville , Maryland , and his two nephews, Andrew and Peter Hinely both of Hawaii .