Wilmot N. Hess

Wilmot Norton Hess (born October 16, 1926 in Oberlin , Ohio , † April 16, 2004 in Berkeley , California ) was an American physicist .

Hess received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University in 1946 and his master's degree in physics from Oberlin College in 1949 . In 1954 he received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and then worked on nuclear weapons at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory . In 1959 he became the project manager of Operation Plowshare in Livermore for the use of atomic bombs in earthworks. In the 1960s he was with NASA in the Goddard Space Flight Center (director of the theory department 1961 to 1967), dealt with the measurement of the spectrum of neutrons in cosmic rays, examined the Van Allen Belt and was director of Science and from 1966 Applications in the Apollo lunar landing program in Houston (Manned Spacecraft Center). In 1969 he became director of the research laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) in Boulder and in 1981 director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). From 1970 to 1978 he was also an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado. In 1986 he became director of the US Department of Energy's nuclear and high energy physics program and, from 1993 until retirement, was associate director of energy research in Germantown , Maryland .

In 1965 he received the Arthur S. Flemming Award, in 1969 the NASA Group Achievement Award and in 1970 he received an honorary doctorate from Oberlin College. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering .

Fonts

• Editor: Introduction to Space Science, Gordon and Breach 1965
• The Radiation Belt and Magnetosphere, Blaisdell 1986
• Weather and Climate Modification, Wiley 1974
• Editor: The Amoco Cadiz oil spill: a preliminary scientific report, US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Washington DC 1978
• The earth's radiation belt, Handbook of Physics
• Man made radiation belts, International Science and Technology, 21, 1963, 40-48
• Energetic particles in the inner Van Allen belts, Space Science Reviews, 1, 1962, 278-312
• Editor with Donald Menzel, John O'Keefe, The nature of the lunar surface, Proc. 1965 IAU-NASA Symp., Johns Hopkins Press 1966

Web links

• Transcript of an interview with Hess in the Oral History Project of the Johnson Space Center, NASA, 2002
• Dr. Wilmot N. Hess on the National Academy of Engineering website