From Bob Weller

Remembering Geoff Allsup

Geoff worked with WHOI’s Upper Ocean Processes (UOP) Group in his final years at WHOI. He was a skilled electronic engineer specializing in very low power and microprocessor-based sensor, instrument, and data logger electronics. He was central to designs of the ASIMET (Air-Sea InteractionMETeorological package) system and modules and updated VMCM (Vector Measuring Current Meter) that have been so successfully campaigned by UOP. He was our main technical point of contact with Star Engineering who manufactures ASIMET now.

I valued his skills, talent. He was always realistic about what he could accomplish on what timetable. I felt he gave us the electronic engineering expertise to accomplish whatever we needed in UOP to do cutting edge ocean science. At the same time, his gentle manner and thoughtfulness were greatly appreciated. He encouraged me to upgrade my amateur radio license, which I did.

From Albert J. Plueddemann

The microprocessor circuit boards that Geoff created nearly always worked perfectly when he delivered them to us for integration and testing. A testament to his thoroughness is that we are still fielding his designs many years after their initial development. Only the obsolescence of electronics parts has stopped us from using the original designs from 25 years ago. I recall a rare instance when things were not working quite right during our testing. We wanted Geoff to look at the sensor output, which we had processed into a file with “engineering units” e.g., wind speed in meters per second. Geoff was not interested in the processed data. He wanted to see the original binary. Sure enough, he diagnosed the binary file by looking for hexadecimal strings denoting the breaks in each data record, something like 656E64. I was amazed that he had such a detailed understanding of what the records would look like from the perspective of the processor board, not from the perspective of the humans trying to understand the wind speed.

From Tom Farrar

I wanted to share these memories of working with Geoff. Your request for memories about Geoff included a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien and noted that "documenting work projects was especially important to Geoff". With that in mind, I want to make sure Geoff's loved ones know about frodo.whoi.edu and the excellent documentation of the ASIMET sensor package that Geoff played a critical role in designing-- see http://frodo.whoi.edu/UOPinstruments/frodo/. (Frodo is of course one of the characters in The Hobbit and other Tolkien books; the last link I gave is what used to be the main page of the frodo.whoi.edu address.)

Geoff did a lot of the electrical engineering for the ASIMET instruments. He worked so much on the programming of the microcontrollers for the instruments that he claimed to be able to read hexidecimal (a file format that conveys binary information in text form). It looks like this:
149A5E0A9E01827C1D139D410AA644FC5EDF103FFF0414EDFFFFFF0000011D0FEB3469FF40AB629A
149A6A0A9DBF827C1D139D360AA60EFC5EDF104FFF0414EDFFFFFF0000011D0FEB3469FF40AB629B
149A780A9DBB827C1D139D360AA66BFC5EDF104FFF0414EDFFFFFF0000011D0FEB3469FF40AB629C
149A860A9E11827C1D139D2D0AA5D8FC5EDF103FFF0414EDFFFFFF0000011D0FEB3469FF40AB629D
149A8A0A9DF8827C18139D290AA672FC5EDF103FFF0414EDFFFFFF0000011D0FEB3469FF40AB729E
I was once in the lab puzzling over whether an instrument was working correctly. Geoff looked at the raw hexidecimal output streaming from an instrument and said, "It looks like it's working fine". I must have given him a weird look, because he then explained that he can read hexidecimal. I guess my next look must have conveyed my disbelief; Geoff was an honest and earnest person, so not wanting to mislead me, he quickly qualified that by saying he could see the numbers changing, so it appeared to be working. Over the years, I came to understand that Geoff had done this trick with many others in the group, because we all jokingly knew that Geoff can read hexidecimal.

At work, I also enjoy the memory of Geoff's long to-do list, which he kept as a text file. It was my impression that he re-ranked the tasks, and he didn't seem optimistic about getting to the tasks on the second page. I remember Geoff as a kind person who spoke fondly his family and his plans to spend time with his family. It was clear that he had a special fondness for his grandkids.

From Robin Singer

Geoff was an extremely talented engineer and highly valued by the group led by Ken Prada in Bigelow Building at WHOI (which is where I met him) and then the group of physical oceanographers in the Clark Building that he eventually joined. His skills included firmware, hardware, software (if needed), and mechanical skills and he was extremely good at all of them. When we went up to the Arctic in 1987 (Prudhoe Bay, Alaska) where we were doing an equipment test run for a Greenland expedition in the Marginal Ice Zone, Geoff was a very valuable member of the PRUDEX team because of his versatility.

It was a very unique place to do a project; among other things, we used ice augers to deploy a buoy in the Arctic ice with sensors going down from the buoy into the ocean (current meter, hydrophones, etc) and other sensors on top of the buoy getting weather information and other data. The "cruise" took a month.

There was the danger from polar bears (we saw one) and the showers were melted snow and not plentiful, the food was very heavy albeit delicious, and we had to keep an eye out to make sure the ice was not breaking up before we finished, which would have been quite dangerous! (The marginal ice zone is an area where thick ice is present in the winter but the ice melts during the spring/summer so there is just ocean. The buoy had flotation so that when the ice broke up it continued taking data and telemetering it back to WHOI as a floating buoy).

I sent Kim some pictures from that expedition and Geoff really looked the part of the rugged Arctic explorer. It was a huge adventure and Geoff's competence was very important in getting the work done! I was so sorry to hear about his passing at such a relatively young age!!

Above all, Geoff loved his family and everyone who knew him was well aware of that. He loved them fiercely and completely.

From Keith von der Heydt

The attached 4 photos were from the 1987 Arctic experiment "PRUDEX-87" well north of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in which Geoff participated. Ice camps were always a challenge for anyone who ever worked under such difficult conditions. Though new to the experience, Geoff was an effective technical participant and enjoyable camp mate.
It is always difficult to hear of the passing of a colleague. While Geoff worked with me for only a relatively short time,
his accomplishments at WHOI are widely known and respected.

From Nan Galbraith

I worked with Geoff for an awfully long time – really most of my long career at WHOI. We were both in Ken Prada’s lab when Geoff and Ken were developing the original IMET system, which is still one of the best instrument packages anywhere in the world. Ken did us the great favor of passing both of us along to Bob Weller, in the Upper Ocean Processes Group in the Physical Oceanography department, where we each had a long career. I think we both enjoyed the challenge of new frontiers and the idea that our work was going to contribute in some small way to answering some of the big questions about earth science.

Geoff was always a good colleague; you could count on him to think things through carefully - and fearlessly! He was quick to take responsibility when anything went wrong, but never looked for kudos when things went swimmingly – which they usually did. I have to say he treated everyone in the group courteously, even when there was conflict. And he was willing to talk about engineering projects with someone like me, who had no expertise in that field; he took input without ever seeming to be condescending.

I’m grateful to have worked with Geoff. I learned a lot from him, in all sorts of fields outside my own experience.

Memories from Colleagues