I very sadly inform the passing away of a long-time AAVSO member Wayne Lowder on January 31, 2003. His son Bruce, informed us that he passed away peacefully while he was working with his computer.

Wayne M. Lowder (1932-2003), of Putnam Valley, New York (observer initials "LX"), made well over 134,400 observations since 1949 (he had thousands of unsubmitted observations that he was intending and working on to have added to the AAVSO database). Even without the observations he did not send, he was in the league with Danie Overbeek, Leslie Peltier, Reginald De Kock, when it came the number of observations submitted.

As a teenager, accompanied by his father, Wayne first visited Harvard College and Oak Ridge Observatories in 1949 and there met Bart Bok. He joined the AAVSO that same year. While he was a student at Harvard University he visited the AAVSO at Harvard College Observatory often and got to know well Leon Campbell, the first Recorder/Director and later Margaret Mayall the second Director of the AAVSO

Wayne, physicist by profession was a remarkable observer. His eyes were like a photometer with response closest to visual magnitude. He was very interested in comparison star magnitude sequences used in AAVSO charts and over the last several years, he had been engaged in researching the relationship of visual and photometric V (both with photoelectric and CCD techniques) magnitudes of comparison stars used by the AAVSO.

He served as AAVSO President from 1993 to 1995 and Treasurer from 1999 to 2001. He was the receipient of Observer Award in 1994 for making over 100,000.

He will be sorely missed as an observer, a very caring member, and a very good friend.

— Janet A. Mattei

The following messages were posted to the AAVSO Discussion in remembrance of Wayne:

February 4, 2003 from Albert Holm February 4, 2003 from Chris Stephan