David W. Allan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- I. I. Rabi Award, 1984[1]
- Time Lord Award, 2011[2]
- IEEE Keithley Award, 2018[3]
David Wayne Allan | |
|---|---|
 Allan in August 2014 | |
| Born | September 25, 1936 Mapleton, Utah, United States |
| Known for | Allan variance |
| Awards |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | physics |
| Institutions | National Institute of Standards and Technology |
| Website | allanstime |
David Wayne Allan (born September 25, 1936) is an American atomic clock physicist and author of the Allan variance (AVAR), also known as the two-sample variance, a measure of frequency stability in clocks, oscillators and other applications.[2] He worked for the National Bureau of Standards in Colorado.[4]
In 1981 Allan developed the Modified Allan variance (MVAR) and then developed the Time variance (TVAR) in the late 1980s. AVAR, MVAR, and TVAR were made IEEE standards in 1988, and are used widely in the time and frequency, navigation, and telecom communities, respectively.[5]
Allan was born in Mapleton, Utah, on September 25, 1936 and attended Springville High School. He studied physics at Brigham Young University (B.S. 1960) and the University of Colorado Boulder (M.S. 1965).[6] From 1960 to 1992, he was a physicist in the Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (then the National Bureau of Standards) in Boulder, and from 1979-1992 served as chief of the Time and Frequency Coordination Group.[6] In 1981, he was a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme in New Delhi, and a guest scientist in the People's Republic of China in 1982.[6]
He retired from government work in 1992 and resides in Fountain Green, Utah[6], where he and his wife live in a self-designed, furnace-less solar home.[7] He consulted for Hewlett Packard from 1993 to 1997. While there, he contributed to "The Science of Timekeeping,[8] which documents his contributions to the nation as a timekeeper- generating time from an ensemble of atomic clocks and from the nation's primary frequency standard at NIST/NBS.
Allan is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[9] He has been married since 1959.[6]
