Born in 1945 in North Vancouver to Dr. Graydon and Penny McLaughlin, Alan died in 2019 and is survived by his wife Teresa (Sinnwell), sons Vihor and William, older brother Stuart, and twin sister Marney Ward.

Alan graduated from Delbrook Secondary School and received his BSc (Hons) in Physics from UBC. With an NRC Fellowship, he earned a PhD from the prestigious Johnson Research Foundation at the Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, then took a post-doctoral fellowship from the Canadian Medical Research Council to Oxford University. After Oxford and some years at the Brookhaven National Laboratories on Long Island, Alan devoted the rest of his career to medical research at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where he was director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, working with nuclear magnetic resonance imaging.

Alan lived a rich and full life, blessed with a happy childhood, a long and loving marriage, and two wonderful sons. Through his distinguished career and his kind and generous nature, he made this world a better place and will be deeply missed.