Norman F. Ness

Norman Frederick Ness (born April 15, 1933 in Springfield ) is an American geophysicist and astrophysicist who is known for studying extraterrestrial magnetic fields with space probes.

Ness received his bachelor's degree in 1955 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where he received his PhD in geophysics in 1959. He then worked at the University of California, Los Angeles , from 1960 as an assistant professor.

Ness was from 1966 to 1986 director of the Laboratory of Extraterrestrial Physics at Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA , where he conducted research since 1960 and pioneered the development of magnetometers for the study of interstellar and planetary magnetic fields (as well as the solar wind made) with space probes. He led corresponding programs, for example, with the Mariner , Pioneer and Voyager probes. 1987 to 2000 he was director of the Bartol Research Institute, which from 2000 belonged to the University of Delaware , where he had been a professor since 1978. In 1969/70 he was visiting professor in Rome.

In 1993 he received the Emil Wiechert Medal and in 1965 the John Adam Flemming Medal of the American Geophysical Union . In 1972 he received the Space Science Award from the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics and several times the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal from NASA (196, 1981, 1986). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1983) and the Accademia dei Lincei .

Web links

• Brief biography in Brief History of Bartol Research Institute