David W. Allan will be interviewed in his home in November 2018 by the IEEE (Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers), because of the significant number of inventions and contributions he has made over his 58 professional years. The IEEE is the largest publishing house in the world of scientific papers. David has well over a hundred papers in their archives.
The historic significance of his contributions and several innovative inventions will be documented by the IEEE in this video interview and be available on the IEEE’s official website. These contributions and inventions were for the international time and frequency community, the navigation community (which includes GPS and other space programs), and the telecommunications communities. Over the years he has received several awards for his work.
These inventions include both software and hardware. For example, the Allan variance (named after him) is used to characterize precision timing systems around the world — including the atomic clocks used in GPS. The atomic-clock time-scale algorithm he wrote in 1965 to combine the readings of atomic clocks is still being used to keep time for the USA with updates and improvements by colleagues.
This time-scale algorithm and the Allan variance also have had a significant influence on the algorithms used by some other countries and for the time kept for the world community. In 2016 the IEEE had a special publication with contributing authors from around the world celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Allan’s master’s thesis, which gave birth to the Allan variance.
The hardware devices he and his team have invented have been used for timing millisecond pulsars, for tracking and navigating space craft – including NASA/JPL’s Deep Space Network — and for communicating the times of atomic clocks around the world for the generation of International Atomic Time (TAI) and Universal Time Coordinated (UTC), which is official time for the world.
One of his inventions also provides the means in timing centers around the world for laboratory timing at the picosecond level (one million millionth of a second) and smaller to measure the ever improving atomic clocks being developed. Allan has witnessed a billion fold improvement in timing accuracy over his life time in this field.
David gives thanks to the outstanding colleagues he has been privileged to work with and especially for the inspiration from the Lord for the ideas that have allowed him to serve the world community thusly.