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Molodensky was a highly original and impressive thinker who made key advances in understanding of the nature of solar magnetic fields. I admired him greatly as a deep thinker about the basics of magnetohydrodynamics. Molodensky’s 1974 paper in Solar Physics was a fundamental one on the nature and equilibrium of force-free magnetic fields. In particular it showed that a field cannot be force-free everywhere. His 1975 and 1976 papers went further showing that a linear force-free field is stable if alpha is small enough, while a nonlinear force-free field is stable if the maximum value of alpha is small enough. Later in the 80s he determined the structure of active region magnetic fields and the nature of the currents in them from observations. This was continued and extended in the 90s to develop techniques for determining the global structure of the corona as seen during eclipses and of the heliospheric current sheet. He was also interested in stereoscopic techniques and in polar plumes and prominences. The paper with Vedenov, Merzlyakov and Starkova in 2005 was particularly interesting, since it constructed 3D models of coronal loops based on H-alpha and TRACE observations. I was only sorry that I did not have more opportunity to learn from and interact with him. His passing is a great sadness and a loss to solar physics.
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