Oral History: David W. Allan (2018)

David Wayne Allan was born in Mapleton, UT in 1936 and was raised on a farm. At age fourteen he became a white-water guide and was the first to run the Hell’s Half Mile rapid in Ladore Canyon on the Green River in a kayak. He married his Sweetheart, Edna Love Ramsay, in the Salt Lake Temple. They have had sixty wonderful years together – celebrating their 60th anniversary on 20 February 2019. They feel greatly blessed to have a wonderful family and friends. David obtained a B.S. in Physics from Brigham Young University and an MS in physics from the University of Colorado. He worked for thirty-two years at NBS/NIST in Boulder, CO, and after retiring he set up his consulting company, Time Interval Metrology Enterprise (TIME).

David’s 1965 master’s thesis gave birth to the Allan variance. In collaboration with colleagues at NBS, he later developed the Modified Allan variance and the Time variance, all three of which became international standards. In 1968, he wrote the time-scale algorithm AT-1 for optimally combining atomic-clock readings to generate official time for the USA. In addition to his work on software and measurement statistics, David has made many contributions to measurement hardware and instrumentation, including the development of the dual-mixer time difference technique, receiver technology for GPS common-view timing, and a special “SmartClock” GPS receiver to remove the civil signal degradation applied to GPS signals and greatly improve timing precision for the telecom industry. He also assisted with the APOLLO, GPS, and NASA/JPL Deep Space Network programs, as well as precision timing measurements for millisecond pulsars.

Dave has received many awards, including the I. I. Rabi Award from the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium (a year after Rabi, the original recipient), the Time Lord Award from the International Timing & Sync Forum in 2011, an Achievement Award in 2016 from the IEEE UFFC, and the IEEE Keithley Award in 2018. He is a Fellow in the Institute of Navigation and an IEEE Life Senior Member. He was a member of URSI and served on the International Radio Consultative Committee, where Richard L. Sydnor and he were editors of an International Telecommunication Union HANDBOOK: Selection and Use of Precise Frequency and Time Systems, which he did in 1997 after his retirement. He remains a member of the International Astronomical Union. He also served as a US representative for the Consultative Committee for the Definition of the Second for many years. In 2018, the IEEE UFFC celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Allan variance with a Special Issue of the Transactions of the UFFC with several authors contributing. Dave has also contributed a lifetime of service to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In addition to serving two full-time missions, he served as Bishop of the newly formed Boulder Second Ward for six years, as Stake President of the Boulder Stake for ten years, and in the Denver Mission Presidency for three years. After moving back to Utah, he taught institute for the Moroni Stake for eleven years, and he continues to give firesides and talks about his research as well as write blog articles.