David Lawrence Meier

David Lawrence Meier was born in St. Louis, Missouri to Lawrence and Mildred Meier. He wasraised in a suburb of St. Louis called Florissant, Missouri. He graduated from Lutheran HighSchool, North in 1967. He moved on to college at the University of Missouri, Rolla (now knownas Missouri Institute of Science and Technology). He graduated with a Bachelor’sDegree in Physics in 1971.

In May of 1969, while on a blind date arranged by two friends, he met his future wife, AnnSchoonover. They married in July of 1971 just after Dave completed his ROTC training for theUnited States Air Force. He barely made the wedding on time! Two years later he was servingactive duty at Scott AFB, where their first child, Amy Christine, was born in August of 1973.After given an option of early discharge, Dave took his family to Austin, Texas where he earneda master’s and a doctorate’s degree in Astrophysics at the University of Texas, Austin. There, inMay 1976, their second child, Jennifer Ann, was born. After he began working for JPL, his familybought a fixer upper in Altadena in 1981. In May of 1982 their third child, Benjamin David, was born.Dave received his PhD in Astrophysics from UT Austin in 1977 and did postdoctoral work atCambridge and Caltech. Dave’s early published work was on primaeval galaxies, working withluminaries such as Beatrice Tinsley and Rashid Sunyaev. At the same time, Dave developed hislife-long passion for black hole and accretion astrophysics, culminating in his 2012 book on“Black Hole Astrophysics, The Engine Paradigm”."Dave arrived at JPL in 1980, and worked on a variety of innovative Projects and Formulationactivities, including in finite-element modeling, Very Long Baseline Interferometry, and theSpace Interferometry mission concept. Dave became a Senior Research Scientist in 2006, andwas the Supervisor of the Evolution of Galaxies Group in Astrophysics starting in 2008. Afterretiring from JPL in 2014, Dave continued active research on black hole astrophysics and jets asa Visiting Associate at Caltech.Dave is survived by his wife of nearly 52 years, Ann; his daughters Amy and Jennifer; hisdaughter-in-law Becky; 6 grandsons and one granddaughter; and brothers Paul and Phil. He ispreceded in death by his son, Benjamin.