It is with great sadness that we report the death of Myron "Mike" Lecar on Wednesday, March 2nd.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Mike received an S.B. in industrial engineering from M.I.T. in 1951. He worked briefly in the aircraft industry and received an M.S., also in industrial engineering, from Case Institute of Technology in 1953.

After his discharge from the Navy, Mike embarked upon doctoral studies in astronomy at Yale, at the invitation of Dirk Brouwer. He finished his Ph.D. in 1963, having carried out some of the earliest computer modeling of stellar atmospheres. While still a graduate student, Mike joined, as one of the founding members, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University in 1962.

At the invitation of Fred Whipple, Mike moved to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in 1965. He remained with SAO until his retirement, as a Senior Astrophysicist, in 2009.

Mike's research interests included gravitational dynamics, planet formation, and the dynamics of our solar system. During his career he authored or co-authored more than 90 scientific articles. Among those is a series of elegant papers, written with Fred Franklin and Marc Murison, establishing a relation between the time scales of dynamical chaos and long-term stability in the solar system. Another article, written with Paul Gorenstein and Daniel Fabricant, was selected as one of the fundamental papers published in the 20th century in the Astronomical Journal and Astrophysical Journal, and reprinted in the AAS Centennial Issue, 1999.

Among his many accomplishments, Mike was particularly proud of his role in establishing the first astronomical observatory in Israel. The Wise Observatory, located in the Negev desert, was dedicated in 1972 and is still operational today.

Always with an eye to the future, Mike was a founding member of Harvard University's 'Origins of Life Initiative' and its Council.

Mike is survived by his brother Harold Lecar, sister-in-law Helene Lecar, and nephews Matthew and Joshua Lecar.