Tor Hagfors

__NOTOC__Tor Hagfors (1930 – 17 January 2007) was aNorwegian scientist, radio astronomer, radar expert and a pioneer in thestudies of the interactions between electromagnetic waves (radiowaves) and a plasma. He was one of several theoristswho developed the theory underlying incoherent scattering in the early1960ies.

Tor Hagfors was born in Oslo in 1930.He studied at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH), and hereceived his doctorate degree in 1959 from the University of Oslo.He worked at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment from1955 to 1963, interrupted by a sabbatical at
Stanford University from 1959 to 1960.He was employed at the Lincoln Laboratory in
Lexington, Massachusetts in two periods, from 1963 to 1967 andfrom 1969 to 1971.From 1967 to 1969 he was director of the Jicamarca Radio Observatory in
Lurigancho, outside Lima, Peru.He was lecturing electrical engineering at NTH from 1973 to 1982,and in the period from 1975 to 1982 he also served as director of
EISCAT, when the organization's facilities in northern Scandinavia wereconstructed.

From 1982 to 1991 Hagfors was director of
National Astronomy and Ionosphere Centerwhich operates the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, andprofessor of astronomy and electrical engineering at
Cornell University.

In 1992 he was appointed director of the
Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy in
Lindau (Katlenburg-Lindau) in Germany, a position he held untilhis retirement in 1998.Hagfors was chairman of EISCAT Council from 1995 to 1996, chairmanof the space science committee in the Norwegian Research Council from1992 to 1997, and member of the Norwegian academy of science(Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi) since 1995. He wasguest professor at the University of Tromsø, Norway,
Nagoya University in Japan, and Lancaster University in
Great Britain.

Hagfors's research was very broad, comprising amongst other thingsionospheric modification (heating), radar astronomy within our
solar system, observations of planetary surfaces from space,techniques in radio remote sensing, scattering fromrough surfaces, thermal fluctuations in
complex plasmas, antennas and radio wavepropagation. He published around 170 scientific papers.

Asteroid 1985 VD₁ was named “7279 Hagfors” in the year2000 [List of asteroids named after physicists.] .

Tor Hagfors died of a heart attack in Puerto Rico on 17 January 2007.

Career

Awards

* 1987 URSI Van der Pol Gold Medal [ [http://www.ursi.org/Chicago08/Awards08/List%20laureates.htm Laureates] of the URSI Awards. Downloaded 16 June 2007]
* 1989 Senior Humboldt fellowship
* 1995 Member of Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi
* 1998 Associate member, Royal Astronomical Society
* 2002 EISCAT's Sir Granville Beynon medal
* 2002 Doctor honoris causa University of Oulu [ [http://www.oulu.fi/promootio2002/honorary.html List of honorary doctorates] awarded at the Universitetet of Oulu on 25 May 2002. Downloaded 16 June 2007.]
* 2003 Honorary doctor University of Tromsø [ [http://uit.no/nyheter/903/501 Article in Tromsøflaket, the University's internal newspaper] . Downloaded 16 June 2007.]
* 2003 William E. Gordon and Elva Gordon distinguished lecture at the Arecibo Observatory on November 3, 2003.

References

* Obituary, "Astronomy and Geophysics", June 2007, 48(3) p.3.37

External links

* [http://www.eiscat.se/ EISCAT website]
* [http://www.naic.edu/ Website for NAIC]
* [http://jro.igp.gob.pe/ Website of Jícamarca Radio Observatory]
* [http://www.ursi.org/ URSI Website]

* [http://idw.tu-clausthal.de/pages/de/news8740 Short biography]
* [http://www.ursi.org/RSBissues/RSBmarch2007incolour.PDF Obituary] (p.65-66) in "Radio Science Bulletin", March 2007