 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Jens Martin Knudsen" astrophysicist – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Jens Martin Knudsen | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1930-10-12)12 October 1930 |
| Died | 17 February 2005(2005-02-17) (aged 74) |
| Alma mater | University of Copenhagen |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astrophysics |
| Signature | |
 | |
Jens Martin Knudsen (12 October 1930 – 17 February 2005) was aDanishastrophysicist. During his scientific career Knudsen authored orco-authored more than 100scientific articles, and was a longtime advisor toNASA.
Knudsen was born inHaurum nearAarhus,Denmark. Knudsen was son of Haurum's grocers and grew up at the grocer's house together with his three brothers of whom Knudsen was the oldest. All of the brothers ended up becoming physicists.[1]
He was originally educated as a school teacher, but in 1962 got his degree inphysics andmathematics from theUniversity of Copenhagen. Immediately after his degree, Knudsen received a job invitation toMIT where he spent the next two years as a guest teacher.[citation needed]
During 1966-1967 he taught physics atMiddle East Technical University in Ankara Turkey. From 1970 to 1973, he worked forUNESCO as a teacher of mathematics inTurkey and later inBrazil. InUniversidade de Brasília Knudsen worked withMössbauer spectroscopy. There in Brazil Knudsen got a direct opportunity to compare the color of Mars in the night sky with the color of the local terrain. It made him wonder if there were common reasons for the near-matched color.[2]
After Knudsen returned to Denmark, he concentrated his studies on meteorites, especially iron-rich meteorites whereMössbauer spectroscopy is especially effective.
In 1990 Knudsen participated in a workshop called "The Environmental Model of Mars" in Hungary. One morning Knudsen had sat down at the morning table at the workshop and started an enthusiastic conversation about why Mars exploration is especially important with two people unknown to him; it turned out that they were Agustin Chicarro, who was ESA's Solar System Research Project Scientist and leading and George Scoon, the chief designer of ESA's orbiter probes.
Both were thrilled about Knudsen's rhetoric and invited him to join a science team for a European probe to Mars. In one of these meetings, two people fromJPL heard Knudsen talk about Mössbauer spectroscopy. Shortly after, they invited him to JPL to talk about Mössbauer spectroscopy in a future Mars mission. At that conference in California, Knudsen used the last five minutes and 45 seconds of his talk to present the idea of using an array of magnets with decreasing field strength as a sort of continuation on the magnetic experiment carried out on theViking lander missions. This idea intrigued the conference and Knudsen was asked whom they should talk to implement such an experiment: Knudsen said that he would call Robert B. Hargraves, who had been Principal Investigator in the "Magnetic Properties Experiment" on the Viking mission.Thanks to Knudsen the development, of the magnet array experiment was granted to the University of Copenhagen.[citation needed]
In 1993, Knudsen became part of NASA's Mars team and shortly thereafter Knudsen established the Danish Mars Group together with Lise Vistisen andMorten Bo Madsen.[citation needed]
Knudsen had a part in the development of the Danish magnet experiment carried on theMars Pathfinder mission in 1996 which was meant to examine the magnetic properties of the Martian dust.[citation needed]
In later years he became known as "Marsmanden" (theMartian) on account of his great enthusiasm towards recent missions to theplanetMars.In 2000 Knudsen was awarded theOrder of the DannebrogIn 2002 he was appointedHonorary Professor ofPlanetary science at theUniversity of Aarhus. At his death he was alsoProfessor Emeritus at theNiels Bohr Institute,University of Copenhagen.
In 2003Jens Kerte wrote a biography of Knudsen entitledMars og Marsmanden (Mars and the Martian) which includes threeinterviews with Knudsen himself.
Knudsen was highly regarded by his students, and is subject of many colloquial songs written by the physics students at theUniversity of Copenhagen which are still sung regularly. After Knudsen's death in 2005 the students wrote a more formal song in his honor, and to this date, the annual student's revue (end-of-year show) reserves the first printed ticket for Jens Martin.[3]
This same regard has led to the prize for most well-taught physics course at theNiels Bohr Institute to be named theJens Martin Prize.
... Brasilien fik lejlighed til direkte at sammenligne Mars' farve på himlen med farven på den lokale jord ... om der måske kunne være et fælles træk mellem årsagerne til disse farver....Archived 12 February 2013 atarchive.today
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
