Jon was a jewel. He ran a quantum computing group of about a dozen people at the Jet Propulsion Lab that was next to my own group in the organization. Eventua

Jon was a jewel. He ran a quantum computing group of about a dozen people at the Jet Propulsion Lab that was next to my own group in the organization. Eventually the NASA funding in that area got too tight and the group disbanded. Jon's group members were incredibly prolific article publishers, which always caused considerable foot-shuffling when the annual ranking (back in the day, a stack ranking, 1 thru N) was done. It was not much fun to be ranking our own group members against Jon Dowling or Colin Williams. Our weekly meetings with those one level up in the hierarchy were a major snooze ... unless Jon was there. The dour manager could barely progress through the agenda between Jon's wisecracks and asides. (And the manager was powerless to clamp down on it because Jon was charming and a top contributor at the same time.) Nothing got done at that meeting either way, but Jon made it a lot more fun.