McGregor, Peter John

Peter McGregor was that rare combination of an excellent scientist who also possessed the ability to lead the design, fabrication, and scientific exploitation of first-rate astronomical instrumentation. The prime example of these abilities is NIFS, the near-infrared integral-field spectrograph, that remains in active use on the Gemini-North 8 m telescope in Hawaii. Not only did Peter oversee the construction of the instrument (twice!—see below) but he also used it scientifically to study black hole masses in the centers of active galaxies, infall/outflow and feedback processes, the central dynamics of massive galaxies, and the outflows from young stars (e.g., Beck, McGregor, Takami, Pyo, ApJ 676:472, 2008; Storchi-Bergmann, Lopes, McGregor, Riffel, Beck, MNRAS 402:819, 2010). It is an undoubted tribute to Peter that, at the time of writing, there are over 100 refereed papers that mention NIFS in the abstract; Peter was first or coauthor on 18 of these contributions.