Eugene Parker, Discoverer of Solar Wind, to Receive Crafoord Prize in Astronomy
This post is adapted from a Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences press release:
AAS member Eugene N. Parker, who discovered the solar wind, will receive this year’s Crafoord Prize in Astronomy. The prize is worth six million Swedish krona (roughly US $620,000) and is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in partnership with the Crafoord Foundation in Lund.
Parker was the first person to realize that the Sun is not in equilibrium, as was previously thought. Quite the opposite, it releases mass; the charged gas of ions and electrons that makes up the Sun’s “atmosphere” is expanding as a solar wind that stretches throughout our planetary system. Parker’s ideas are also the foundation for forecasts about space weather, which can disrupt satellites and cause power outages here on Earth. NASA's Parker Solar Probe, the first to be named after a living person, is currently on its way to the Sun. It was launched in 2018, and its first results were reported just before Christmas.
Parker is responsible for several fundamental discoveries about the gases that surround the Sun and other stars. He has also developed the theory of how the solar wind arises and how magnetic fields arise and change in space. When he initially presented his theories, over 50 years ago, they were strongly challenged, but they were later confirmed through observations from spacecraft. He will now receive the Crafoord Prize in Astronomy “for pioneering and fundamental studies of the solar wind and magnetic fields from stellar to galactic scales.”
Eugene N. Parker is S. Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago. He was born in 1927 in Houghton, Michigan, and received his PhD in 1951 from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.
The Crafoord Prize is awarded in partnership between the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Crafoord Foundation in Lund. The Academy is responsible for selecting the Laureates. The disciplines, which change every year, are mathematics and astronomy, geosciences, biosciences, and polyarthritis (i.e., rheumatoid arthritis). The prize disciplines are chosen as a complement to the Nobel Prizes. The prize ceremony will be held in Stockholm on 15 May 2020 in the presence of Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia.
Added 10 Feb. 2020: