Alec was my younger brother. He was a brilliant applied mathematician, changing how we use computers to understand magnetic reconnection. This work helped us to understanding better how the earth's magnetosphere interacts with solar wind, something that sounds esoteric until you realize that the stability of our power grid and satellite navigation depend on an accurate understanding. It will also be essential if we ever achieve power generation by nuclear fusion.
He wasn't just brilliant, though. He cared deeply about others, and always in meaningful and concrete ways. Shortly before he died, he was telling me excitedly about his plans to visit his friends Pierre and Natalie in Haiti, whom he had helped financially for years in their work, rescuing and rehabilitating so-called "orphans" who were mostly abandoned. Pierre knew about this intimately, because he himself was abandoned by his living mother, disowned by his living father, and abused as a restavek (literally, "stay-with") child-slave.
If this makes you more curious about the backstory for this project, the long version with more details is here:
neilhimself