Pioneers of space physics: A career in the solar wind

Abstract. This paper is s personal history of the author’s experiences, starting with the earliest direct measurements of the solar wind and continuing through later experiments to investigate the physics of the solar wind and its interaction with comets. Getting to the Right Place at the Right Time It is difficult to think of myself as one of the “Pioneers of Space Physics. ” I certainly did not enter the field because of any strong pioneering spirit. It was simply a matter of being at the right place at the right time. So, I’ll start by explaining how it was that I happened to be working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the very start of the space age. I majored in physics as an undergraduate at Cornell. I am not sure why. Perhaps it was because my father had taught me to use a slide rule which made high school physics a lot easier and more interesting than it might have been. Or perhaps part of the attraction was getting to know one of my lab partners in sophomore physics at Cornell, named Gerry Neugebauer