Hannes Alfvén Medal 2006

The American scientist Donald A. Gurnett has won the prestigious EGU Hannes Alfvén Medal for his pioneering work on plasma waves in the solar wind and in the magnetospheres of the Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. His work has greatly contributed to our understanding of space plasma physics.

The EGU Hannes Alfvén Medal has been established in recognition of the scientific achievements of Hannes Alfvén, to be awarded for outstanding scientific contributions towards the understanding of plasma processes in the solar system and other cosmical plasma environments.

Donald A. Gurnett has served on the faculty of the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Iowa, where he holds the Carver/Van Allen professorship of Physics and Astronomy since 1989. In 1998 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Resumé

Professor Gurnett’s scientific work is devoted to the study of space plasma, especially the many kinds of waves, including Alfvén waves, that exist in space plasmas. He has identified important problems, conceived instrumentation to make the relevant measurements and engineered and developed the instruments needed. He has formed and led teams to build and fly the instruments on spacecraft and developed unique data analysis and presentation techniques. He has used these analysis techniques, along with his deep understanding of plasma theory, to understand the nature of the fluctuations observed in the data. He has participated in thirty spacecraft projects, most notably the Voyager 1 and 2 flights to the outer planets, the Galileo mission to Jupiter, and the Cassini mission to Saturn.

Professor Gurnett’s work has provided an understanding of how waves are generated by the very energetic charged particle distributions found in the radiation belts of the magnetized planets, and how these waves influence the energy and velocity distribution of the charged particles via various processes generally known as wave-particle interactions. Many of these same processes are also relevant to laboratory and cosmical plasmas. Professor Gurnett is the author or co-author of over 450 scientific publications, primarily in the area of magnetospheric radio and plasma wave research.

Medal Lecture

Professor Gurnett will accept his medal and give his Medal lecture during the EGU General Assembly, to be held in Vienna, Austria from 2 – 7 April 2006. The lecture ‘Waves in space plasmas: A historical overview of the sounds of space’ starts Wednesday, 5 April, at 13:30 h in Lecture Room 15.

More information:
http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/awards/hannes_alfven_overview.html