25

involved in many development projects, e.g.

realizing a next-generation drop tower system

called GraviTower Bremen.

Dr. Könemann started his academic career

reading physics in Hanover, Germany. After

his intermediate diploma he changed to the

University of Bremen and first came in contact

with ZARM as a student. During his student

time at ZARM he was involved in the

MICROSCOPE project for a short period. In

2006 he finished his diploma thesis in the field

of quantum physics and immediately

proceeded to work as a PhD student in the

same project at ZARM. Within this pilot

project called QUANTUS Dr. Könemann was

a member of the team that realized the world’s

first Bose-Einstein Condensate under

weightlessness conditions at the Drop Tower

Bremen. Up to now, the QUANTUS project

and its follow-on projects represent an

emerging area of science in quantum

engineering with an impressive potential for

future technology developments and

multidisciplinary applications. In many

proceedings and publications including one

remarkable publication in Science Magazine -

Science 328, 1540 (2010) - related to this topic

Dr. Könemann made significant contributions

as author as well as co-author.

After finishing his PhD with a doctoral degree

in engineering Dr. Könemann directly moved

to ZARM FAB mbH early 2010. Since then, he

has facilitated and managed a large number of

microgravity experiments at the Drop Tower

Bremen within a variety of research fields, e.g.

Astrophysics, Biology, Combustion, Fluid

Dynamics, Fundamental Physics and Materials

Sciences.

In Memoria

Robert P. Lin (1942-2012),

COSPAR Vice-President and

Pioneering Space Scientist

Robert Lin, vice-president of COSPAR and

pioneer in the field of high-energy space

physics, collapsed after suffering a stroke in

his laboratory at the University of California,

Berkley on 16 November 2012. He died, with

his wife at his side, the following day.

On hearing this sad news, COSPAR Executive

Director Jean-Louis Fellous commented: “His

passing away is and will be felt as a great loss

within our space research community. Bob

Lin’s memory will remain with us as an

example of wisdom and dedication to science

and international cooperation.” Bob Lin

succeeded Edward C. Stone as U.S.

Representative to COSPAR on 1 July 2010

and, a few weeks later, was elected to one of

COSPAR’s dual vice-presidencies at the 38th

Scientific Assembly in Bremen.

Robert Peichung Lin was born in Kwangsi, in

southern China, on 24 January 1942. He left

China with his parents at a young age and,

after a brief sojourn in London, England,

eventually moved to the United States and

settled in Michigan.

He completed his undergraduate studies in

physics at the California Institute of

Technology in 1962. For his graduate studies,

he moved on to the Department of Physics at

the University of California, Berkeley.

26

Robert P. Lin on the occasion of his retirement as

director of the Space Sciences laboratory at the

University of California, Berkeley (Photograph by Peg

Skorpinski)

At Berkeley, Bob became a protégé of

pioneering space physicist Kinsey Anderson.

The latter was the principal investigator of the

Ion Chamber and G.-M. Counters experiment

on NASA’s Interplanetary Monitoring Platform

3 (IMP 3, also known as Explorer 28). The

directions of Bob’s graduate studies and a

primary focus of his future research career

became apparent in 1966 when he and

Anderson reported that high-energy electrons

detected by IMP 3 were associated with a solar

flare. This discovery lead to the publication of

Bob’s first two scientific papers: “Observations

on the Propagation of Solar Flare Electrons in

Interplanetary Space” in Physical Review

Letters and “Evidence for Connection of

Geomagnetic Tail Lines to the Interplanetary

Field” in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Both papers were co-authored with Anderson.

The discovery also formed the basis of Bob’s

1967 doctoral dissertation, Observations of

Solar Flare Electrons in Interplanetary Space.

After receiving his doctorate, Bob maintained

his association with Berkley and, in particular,

the university’s Space Sciences Laboratory

(SSL) for the rest of his career. Over the next

30 years he ascended through the ranks of the

SSL hierarchy from assistant research physicist

(1967) to associate director (1992). In 1998, he

became director of the SSL and retained the

directorship until his retirement in 2008. In

addition to his various positions at the SSL,

Bob also held professorships in Berkeley’s

physics and astronomy departments.

Bob’s research topics were diverse. He defied

easy categorization into one of the traditional

space science disciplines. His interests

included supernovae, solar flares, the magnetic

fields on the surface of the Moon and Mars,

and the geospace environment. Thus, his

interests encompassed astrophysics, solar

physics, planetary science, and space physics.

However, a common theme linking most of his

research activities was that of how particles are

accelerated to high energies in cosmic

environments.

At the height of his career, he wrote: “My

research interests are in the areas of

experimental space physics and high-energy

astrophysics. Specific topics in space physics

include solar flares and solar cosmic rays;

plasma phenomena in the interplanetary

medium and the Earth’s magnetosphere such as

collisionless shock waves, particle

acceleration, magnetic reconnection, and

wave-particle interactions; and lunar, planetary,

and cometary studies. In high-energy

astrophysics, I have concentrated on high

resolution gamma-ray and hard X-ray

spectroscopy and imaging of line and

continuum emissions from the Sun, cosmic

sources, and the Earth. These emissions

provide detailed information on processes such

as the interaction of accelerated particles with

matter, radioactive decay of newly formed

isotopes in supernovae, positron annihilation

near black holes, cyclotron emission in the

strong magnetic fields of neutron stars, etc. My

approach is to develop innovative instruments

and fly them on spacecraft, rockets, and

balloons.”

During his long association with the SSL, Bob

was actively involved with numerous

spacecraft missions including: IMP 4, 5, and

27

6; Explorer 33 and 35; the lunar subsatellites

deployed by Apollo 15 and 16; International

Sun-Earth Explorer 1, 2, and 3; Wind, the

Solar TErrestrial Relations Observatory

(STEREO) and the Time History of Events and

Macroscale Interactions during Substorms

(THEMIS) missions; Mars Global Surveyor

and Lunar Prospector; and Giotto and Cluster.

Bob’s greatest achievement was probably the

Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic

Imager (RHESSI), a spacecraft for which he

was the principal investigator. This Small

Explorer mission was launched in 2002 to

explore the basic physical processes

responsible for particle acceleration and the

explosive release of energy during solar flares.

This was achieved through imaging and

spectroscopic observations of bremsstrahlung

hard X-ray/gamma-ray continuum and gamma-

ray lines produced by the energetic electrons

and ions, respectively. RHESSI also made

important astrophysical observations. These

included the detection of the gamma-ray

emission line of the short-lived radionuclide 26

Al created in supernova explosions, strong

polarization in a cosmic gamma-ray burst,

high-resolution, hard X-ray images of the Crab

nebula.

Even after retiring as director of SSL, Bob

remained an active researcher. He was deeply

involved in the development of new spacecraft

and balloon missions at the time of his death.

His innovative modular microsatellite known

as Cubesat for Ions, Neutrals, Electrons, and

MAgnetic fields (CINEMA) was launched on

13 September, 2012.

His new instrument, the Focusing Optics X ray

Solar Imager (FOXSI) was successfully tested

on a balloon flight on 2 November, 2012.

Finally, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatiles

EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission, for which he

served as the deputy principal investigator, is

scheduled to launch later this year.

Bob received many honours and awards during

his long and distinguished career. He was

elected to the National Academy of Sciences of

United States of America in 2006. His election

citation reads: “Lin is a world-renowned

experimentalist in space science. Through

numerous, innovative instruments that have

flown on NASA missions, he has revealed the

behaviour of electrons and ions accelerated by

the Sun, and detected the accompanying X-ray

and gamma-ray emissions.”

He was also a fellow of the American

Academy of Arts and Sciences and the

American Geophysical Union. He was a

recipient of COSPAR-Chinese Academy of

Sciences Jeoujang Jaw Award and the George

Ellery Hale Prize of American Astronomical

Society’s Solar Physics Division. He also

received a Docteur Honoris Causa de

l’Université de Toulouse in France.

Bob Lin is survived by his wife, Lily Lin of

Berkley, California; and his stepson, Linus

Sun, of New York, New York. The SSL is

establishing a graduate scholarship in his

honour.

David H. Smith, Executive Secretary, U.S.

National Committee for COSPAR

Jorge Sahade (1915-2012),

Leading Argentinian Astronomer

Academician (in several academies) Professor

(at many universities), Dr. Jorge Sahade was a

man who took many important decisions

during his almost one hundred years of life,

most of them leading to important results. Late

in 2012 he made, as was his trademark, one

last important decision. He decided that he was

finally tired, tired of living one of the most

active lives any person can imagine living. He

turned off the computer that contains his

unfinished memoirs and simply prepared to die

of natural causes, something that occurred on

18 December 2012.

Jorge Sahade was born in 1915 in Alta Gracia,

Province of Córdoba, Argentina. He first

obtained the Degree of Surveyor at the

Universidad de Córdoba in 1937 and then

moved to La Plata to study astronomy, getting

his Doctorate in Astronomy, the third conferred