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Norman F. Ness

Title: Office: Phone: email: Web:

Professor 202 Sharp Lab (302) 831-1844 nfnudel@yahoo.com http://www.bartol.udel.edu/facstaff/ness.html

Fields of Research

Dr. Ness joined the newly established NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center in 1960. Until 1986, he was a research scientist and administrator at NASA-GSFC, establishing the Laboratory for Extraterrestrial Physics in 1966. A member of the National Academy of Sciences (1983) and Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (1992), he is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He has received 3 NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Awards, (1966, 1981, 1986); AGU John A. Fleming Medal (1965); U.S. Government A.S. Fleming Award (1968); AIAA Space Science Award (1972); U.S. S.E.S. Meritorious Award (1981); and the NASA D.S.M. (1986). Dr. Ness succeeded Dr. Martin A. Pomerantz in 1987 as the Director of Bartol with his appointment as President of the then newly created UD-BRI. During the subsequent 5 years, Dr. Ness completed a successful program of vigorous growth, which included the restructuring and transferring of the primary affiliation to the University of Delaware. There was a four-fold increase in the level of grant and contract supported research (from less than $1 million in FY86 to over $4 million in FY00). Grants and contracts were from multiple Federal agencies: DOE, NSF, ONR and especially NASA. He became Professor of the Bartol Research Institute at the University of Delaware in 2000.

His principal research interests are in measurement, analysis and interpretation of weak magnetic fields in interplanetary space and magnetic fields of the planets. He has been Principal Investigator on 21 separate missions. His investigations of the structure and dynamics of the interplanetary magnetic field (from 0.3 to 85 AU and beyond) definitively established the present day understanding of the magnetoplasma structure of heliospheric space. Significant discoveries include intrinsic magnetic fields of Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Mars. He has been involved in cooperative research with colleagues from the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy and the U.S.S.R.

In 1991, UD-BRI became the lead institution in the NASA funded state wide Delaware Space Grant Consortium with Dr. Ness as Director. The DESGC was expanded in 1992 to include several institutions of post-secondary learning in adjacent Pennsylvania: Swarthmore College, Villanova University, Lehigh University, Franklin and Marshall College and Gettysburg College.