It remains difficult for us to state that Arthur George Larson, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October 1943, passed away in February 2025, following heart surgery in Boston.

Born to Swedish immigrants Ada Eleanor and George Larson, Arthur grew up in Arlington and Lexington. The baby of the family, we assume he was a somewhat doted upon rascal running wild through farms and woods. As a teenager, he worked the soda fountain at Park Pharmacy, and attended Lexington High School, where he excelled in math and science and was president of the chess club. He had a beloved older sister, Elna.

Life took Arthur to many places but in the long view, he stayed close to home. After completing a mathematics degree at Brandeis University, he began a career in aerospace, traveling to radar arrays in Shemya (Alaska) and Kwajalein (the Marshall Islands) and evaluating radar sensor data, sometimes from basement bunkers, at MIT Lincoln Laboratory (Massachusetts). As a young man he drove sports cars, snapped photos with a camera he ordered from Japan, and flew over the North Pole from Alaska to meet family in Sweden.

He would work at Lincoln Lab for 35 years. It was there that he met his wife, Laurie, who also worked with radar data and came from a Swedish background. They married in 1975 and settled in the woods of Stow, Massachusetts, where they built a life surrounded by nature. They raised two children, heated the house with a wood stove, and always had a dog or two.

Arthur was devoted to Laurie and to their children, Lisa and Neil, for whom he was storyteller, naturalist, scientist, teacher. He made his children's education a top priority and exemplified a love of learning. To them he counseled and modeled prudence but never hesitated to support their dreams. In time he became a quietly playful grandfather to five grandsons.

Arthur enjoyed his work at Lincoln Lab and valued the camaraderie and intellect of his colleagues but chose an early retirement to focus on other pursuits, including travel; landscaping and brush management at the Stow homestead; and his second career as an income tax preparer. He typically worked late in the evening during tax season, applying a mechanical pencil and ticker-tape calculator to ensure each client's numbers were in order. He was active in the NAEA tax professional society and was profiled in a 2003 issue of Newsweek as perhaps the last preparer working without the use of tax software. Nonetheless, his clients' returns were e-filed: Laurie typed and submitted every form. They worked as a team until Art's second quasi-retirement in 2024.

Travel was a pleasure for Art. He valued sharing life's journey with his cousins overseas and he and Laurie continued to visit with Swedish family whenever possible. Arthur also led unforgettable family trips to the Everglades, the California coast, the Mojave desert, instilling in his children a love of other-worldly landscapes and the call of the open road. He and Lisa road-tripped across the US in 1998; and in 2024, Arthur was quite pleased to join a Larson Boys escapade in Las Vegas and Zion with Neil and his three sons.

Many travel dreams were yet to be brought to fruition, and some were thwarted by health and world events, but in retirement Art and Laurie enjoyed further adventures, including cruises in the Arctic and the Caribbean. Laurie's work with an international start-up also took them to the Irish countryside, the Great Wall of China, Hong Kong, and the Philippines.

Arthur was humble, reticent, and stoic, rarely inclined to speak of himself or ask anything of others. Still, he had a long list of favorite indulgences, tending toward the piquant, from spicy pickles and smoked fish to salty licorice to dark beer; from Mozart to Philip Glass. He liked weird and meditative films and kept a long watchlist. He tended to cacti and orchids in his sunroom office and enjoyed their showy blooms, but no doubt was equally pleased by the neat stacks of oak logs he'd assembled by the driveway. He read avidly, and his deep shelves on Zen Buddhism and quantum theory, and his deep calm, led us to believe he understood the secret nature of things.

It felt incongruous and unjust that a man of such quiet dignity should be subject to the vicissitudes of the body, and it has seemed unbelievable that someone so steadfast should cease to be here. Nor can we ever bring ourselves to say that there could have been any problem with his heart.

Arthur leaves behind family, friends, and clients who will remember him always as meticulous, intelligent, kind, and one-of-a-kind. A family gathering to celebrate his life will be held in June.