micah t collins

James McGuire of Spring Garden Township remembered his son-in-law, 38-year-old Brian Robertson, the CEO of a California solar energy company, as an amazing, genius pioneer Friday evening….

…Robertson was CEO of Amonix Inc., a company specializing in utility-scale solar power. He turned around the struggling company and made it one of the largest of its kind in the country, McGuire said.

Robertson believed solar power is a viable, renewable resource, McGuire said. That was his mission…

…Brian Robertson had a degree in computer science from MIT and before going into the solar power business was instrumental in the early development of Web-based businesses, according to a company biography on Amonix Inc.’s website.

In 1996, he co-founded PlanetAll and served as chief technical officer until Amazon.com bought the company two years later, the biography states. He stayed with Amazon, where he developed the company’s community and personalization technologies.

Robertson also co-founded Visible Markets, a electronic trading platform for mortgage- and asset-based securities, until it was acquired by Thomson Financial in 2001.