My sister Louise Kellogg was a leading geophysicist specialising in geodynamics: the study of how movement deep in the interior of the earth drives surface phenomena like the movement of the crust via plate tectonics. She discovered new structures deep in the earth's mantle, new connections between geophysics and geochemistry, and consequences of deep earth phenomena evident at the earth's surface. She built rich and useful mathematical and computational models to interrogate geodynamic processes. She was also devoted to equity and inclusion at all levels of science, and led by example. A very incomplete picture of her scientific contributions is on her Wikipedia page, her faculty page at UC Davis is here, a memorial page is here, and collected remembrances are here.
Louise occasionally gave talks for a general audience. At the 2017 American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting, she was invited to give a talk in a special session called "UpGoer 5", in which talks were restricted to a vocabulary of the most common 1000 words in English. (The first "UpGoer" session was I think about one of the Mars landing missions, but "rocket" is not in the top 1000 words, so it became "UpGoer") Louise's five-minute talk in 2017 was on the movement of carbon between different layers of the earth. She couldn't use the word "carbon", though, so she called it "the stuff that makes the wood things we write with and the small pretty rocks that women wear on their fingers". https://youtu.be/WF0HbPscQgE?t=2105
December 2018 was the beginning of the 100th anniversary of the AGU, and they split the plenary session into short talks by leaders in different disciplines. In Louise's talk, she spoke on a journey to the centre of the earth, and her (again, 5 minutes) presentation was beautiful. It starts at 11:15 here https://www.facebook.com/AmericanGeophysicalUnion/videos/212010079708438/UzpfSTE4MTkxODQ6MTAxMDQ4MTEyNDU0MDc0NDk/
At UC Davis, Louise was founder and director of KeckCAVES, the W. M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in Earth Sciences, which in addition to scientific and computational research led to broader public and artistic interaction. Louise had a life-long interest in dance. She studied both modern dance and African dance, and wrote reviews of dance performances for newspapers starting in college. Using the augmented reality infrastructure of KeckCAVES, she collaborated with the choreographer Della Davidson a new work "COLLAPSE: Suddenly Falling Down". Louise was the technology director for this dance work, and was delighted with having artistic works alongside scientific works on her CV. You can see excerpts here https://youtu.be/ZAaGXVS0KkU
KeckCAVES also developed augmented reality tools for education, including an augmented reality sandbox that has been installed in hundreds of museums around the world. People of all age can play with sand in the box. A dynamically generated contour map based on a 3D camera is projected from above onto the sandbox, and fluid dynamic calculations can simulate volcanoes, earthquakes, and hydrodynamic situations like watersheds, floods and dam breakage. https://arsandbox.ucdavis.edu/
Louise received many honours. She was elected a fellow of several honorary organisations, including both the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Association for Arts and Sciences (the other AAAS). The "other AAAS" was perhaps the election she was most proud of because it recognised the diversity of her work, including public outreach, artistic collaboration, and science. Robert de Niro, Bruce Springsteen, and Louise's favourite New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast were elected that year; Louise was delighted to sit next to Sally Field at the celebration dinner.
I've written above of her professional accomplishments. Louise was also a truly ideal sister and confidante. I looked up to her all my life, but our our relationship was as easy and uncomplicated as it was rich and deep. We were close, we gave and took advice from each other, shared stories and interests, and supported each other. I loved her, admired her, and was in contact with her virtually every day, at least since instant messaging became commonplace. I miss her more than I can put into words. I can't believe she's gone.