February 28, 2025
Winston is remembered for pioneering solar energy
Roland Winston, SB’56, SM’57, PhD’63—a pioneer in solar energy, engineering, and physics—died Feb. 8 at his home in Merced. He was 88.
Winston was a University of Chicago Physics Department professor from 1965 to 2003, serving as the department chair from 1989 to 1995, as well as a member of the Enrico Fermi Institute. In 2003, he helped establish UC Merced, where he retired as Distinguished Professor Emeritus.
A founding faculty member in the schools of Natural Sciences and Engineering at UC Merced, Winston also founded and directed the intercampus collaborative Advanced Solar Technologies Institute, known as UC Solar.
His research and teaching focused on concentrating solar energy systems. Winston published hundreds of articles in scientific journals, co-wrote several books, and held more than 50 patents.
Solar energy foundations
More than 50 years ago, as a junior faculty member in the University of Chicago Physics Department, he published a paper introducing a new field he called non-imaging optics, describing the compound parabolic solar concentrator (CPC), a highly efficient device that collects and concentrates light, and introducing “Winston Cones,” non-imaging light collectors that by their design maximize the amount of light that can be focused from large areas into smaller photodetectors or photomultipliers.
Much of the solar-concentrating research that has followed has been based on that landmark 1966 paper.
“Professor Winston was a distinguished scholar and a widely respected researcher whose work elevated the national and international profile of UC Merced. His research has not only advanced our understanding of solar energy but also positioned our university as a leader in this critical area of study,” UC Merced Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz said. “As we mourn his loss, we also celebrate his extraordinary legacy, which will continue to guide and inspire future generations.”
Because of the publication and his inventions, Winston is widely considered to be the father of non-imaging optics, a field concerned with the optimal transfer of light radiation between a source and a target.
Non-imaging solar collectors—once thought to be impossible—don’t need to track the sun and can function well under cloudy or hazy skies. They revolutionized solar energy use by providing the widest possible acceptance angles. They offer higher solar concentrations in smaller cells and generate higher temperatures with less thermal loss. They improve the reliability and efficiency of the solar cells in concentrated photovoltaics and improve heat transfer in concentrated solar thermal.
International experts continue to highlight the importance of Winston’s breakthrough. Professor Aldo Steinfeld of ETH Zurich university cited Winston’s work when he was asked by his campus’s president to present an example of basic research that led to a highly practical application comparable to Albert Einstein’s photoelectric effect that led to the development of photovoltaics.
The concepts developed and the devices Winston invented formed the core of solar technology, which carries the promise of making solar energy a viable energy source for society. Winston’s work also formed the foundation of many extensive experiments to advance the field, including one that won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2015.
His inventions were recognized with a variety of awards and honors. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, won the Joseph Fraunhofer Award for “significant accomplishments in optical engineering” from the Optical Society of America, and was elected as a U.S. delegate to the International Solar Energy Society.
In 1988, using a new mirror-based technique, Winston and his team set a record for concentration of solar energy, concentrating sunlight to more than 60,000 times its normal intensity.
Scholar, mentor, social entrepreneur
Winston was born Feb. 12, 1936, in Moscow, USSR, the son of an American engineer who was helping the Soviets design towns and build an industrial base. The family evacuated the Soviet Union in 1943 during World War II, as the German military got within artillery range.
He attended the Bronx High School of Science in New York City for two years, earning early entrance to Shimer College in Illinois before transferring to the University of Chicago, where he earned a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a PhD.
He studied under Yoichiro Nambu, who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize for Physics for explaining why matter is much more common in the cosmos than antimatter. But his most influential mentor was Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who shared the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics for key discoveries that led to the currently accepted theory on the later evolutionary stages of massive stars.
After a short stint as an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Winston returned to the University of Chicago and was later appointed chair of the Department of Physics. He conducted research at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, Switzerland, and at Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, both in the Chicago area. He was also a visiting professor at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel.
Besides solar energy, Winston also researched high-energy and particle physics and astrophysics. “Roland—a remarkably thoughtful and creative scientist and a kind and generous colleague—invented the field of non-imaging optics to solve a problem he encountered while constructing a detector for a particle physics experiment,” said Edward Blucher, UChicago Professor in the Physics Department and Director of the Enrico Fermi Institute. “His insight revolutionized light collection for both solar energy and for numerous experiments in physics and astronomy.”
“Besides non-linear optics, Roland was very much focused on the particle physics of the ‘weak magnetism’ of the hyperon decays. He performed a series of seminal experiments at Argonne and Fermilab,” said UChicago Physics Professor Yau W. Wah, who first met Winston when Wah was a Yale graduate student working on the Fermilab E497 experiment, designed to measure charged hyperon fluxes, polarization, and magnetic moments. Wah and Winston went on to collaborate on several experiments at the University of Chicago and Enrico Fermi Institute.
“Roland was a great mentor for generations of graduate students, postdocs, and faculty members,” added Wah. “And his influence went beyond research—he introduced me to opera and gave me a ticket to The Marriage of Figaro at the Chicago Civic Opera House.”
Winston joined UC Merced in 2003 as one of the original eight founding faculty members, and like all of the faculty at the new campus, held dozens of committee positions, helped write curriculum, build schools, recruit administrators and other faculty members, and recruit graduate students, in addition to building his research institute.
Over his nearly 20 years at UC Merced, he guided many undergraduate and graduate students, and when he retired in 2022 at the age of 86, his work didn’t stop. He founded Winston Cone Optics, a company dedicated to his research in solar technologies and to making solar energy more efficient and less expensive so it could be available to more people. He hired several people he had worked with through UC Solar, including graduate students and his administrative assistant, Robyn Lukens.
She cited his kindness, pointing out that Winston and his wife, Pat, paid Lukens’ tuition so she could attain her associate’s degree in accounting at Merced College. As a single mother, Lukens said she was touched and truly grateful.
Professor Sarah Kurtz, whom Winston greatly esteemed, worked with him on several projects and said she had the opportunity to observe him as he worked with students.
“Roland always supported his team members with great enthusiasm, focusing on what they could do rather than on their shortcomings,” she said.
Professionally, she said, Winston made a profound contribution to the world.
Winston was a fellow with the American Physical Society, the American Optical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Solar Energy Society, the International Solar Energy Society, and SPIE, the International Society for Optics and Photonics.
He won many awards throughout his career, including the Franklin Institute C. Raymond Kraus Gold Medal; the Farrington Daniels Award of the International Solar Energy Society; the University of Chicago’s Alumni Award for Professional Achievement; and UC Merced’s first Chancellor’s Award, which included the Professor Roland Winston Endowed Scholarship, available to an entering first-year student with a declared major in physics or engineering who demonstrates financial need and/or is a DREAM Act student.
Winston is survived by his sons John and Joe, half-brothers Eugene and Vanya Loroch, grandsons Milo and Beckett Winston, and step-grandchildren Zoe and Alex Leuba. He is predeceased by his wife, Patricia, and son Gregory. Services will be held privately by the family.
Adapted from the obituary originally published by UC Merced.