Dr. Loren Acton is a rancher’s son from Lewistown. Born in 1936, he was the last of 6 children. He graduated from high school in Billings in 1954. Then he attended Montana State College, and graduated with a B.S. in Engineering Physics in 1959. During this time, he also married Evelyn Oldenburger.

He received his Ph.D. in Astrogeophysics at the University of Colorado – Boulder in 1965. Then he worked for 29 years with Lockheed Palo Alto Research Lab in CA doing solar physics and astrophysics using rockets and satellites.

He flew on the space shuttle Challenger for 8 days, with a Lockheed solar telescope, as a Payload Specialist on the Spacelab 2 mission in 1985.

He returned to Bozeman in 1993, and is now a Research Professor of Physics at MSU.

  

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