Eugene N. Parker, a University of Chicago astrophysicist who predicted the existence of the solar wind, died on Tuesday. He was 94. From The New York Times
In 2017, a NASA mission to fly through the outer wisps of the sun’s atmosphere was renamed after Parker. “He wrote the textbook on heliophysics,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for NASA’s science directorate, who spearheaded the name change.
When Parker published his prediction in 1958, almost no one believed him, including the reviewers of his paper and the editor of The Astrophysical Journal that published it. Parker, he said, was happy when people pointed out a mistake in his calculations but not pleased when people accepted prevalent scientific assumptions without question.Even though Chandrasekhar, a future Nobel laureate, disagreed with Parker’s conclusions, he overruled the reviewers, and the paper was published.
“There we go,” Parker said as the engines of a Delta 4 Heavy rocket lit up the early-morning skies around Cape Canaveral on Aug. 12, 2018. Eugene Newman Parker was born on June 10, 1927, in Houghton, Michigan. His father, Glenn, was an engineer at Chrysler; his mother, Helen Parker, was a homemaker. Parker’s crucial insight was that this flow of particles would follow the same dynamics as wind and water. The calculations showed that the flow started slow near the sun and accelerated to supersonic speeds as it moved away.
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