Norman Frederick Ness (April 15, 1933 – December 4, 2023) was an American geophysicist.
Biography Ness was born 15 April 1933 in Springfield, Massachusetts and grew up in Meriden, Connecticut. He received a BSc (1955) and a PhD (1959) in geophysics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined NASA Goddard center in 1960, and soon became the principal investigator of the magnetometer experiments on the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform satellites. He directed the Explorer 35 Moon mission, and became involved into planetary science. He designed magnetometers for Pioneer 11 and for twin Voyager program spacecraft. Pioneer 11 discovered the magnetic field of Saturn; Voyager 2 discovered magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune.
Together with John M. Wilcox, Ness discovered the heliospheric current sheet in 1965.
From 1966 to 1986 he was director of the Laboratory of Extraterrestrial Physics at the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. In 1987, he became director of the Bartol Research Institute at the University of Delaware. He retired in 2005.
Ness died in Venice, Florida, on December 4, 2023, at the age of 90.
Personal life Ness was married twice and had a son and a daughter. He was a sailor and a coach for the US Naval Academy Sailing Squadron in Annapolis.
Awards 1965 John A. Fleming Medal of the American Geophysical Union 1965, 1981, 1986 NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal 1968 Arthur S. Flemming Award 1972 AIAA Space Science Award 1975 GSFC Lindsay Memorial Award 1983 elected to the National Academy of Sciences 1993 Emil Wiechert Medal of the German Geophysical Society Award 1993 US National Space Club Science Award
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