Tor Hagfors (18 December 1930 – 17 January 2007) was aNorwegianscientist,radio astronomer,radar expert and a pioneer in the studies of the interactions betweenelectromagnetic waves andplasma. In the early 1960s he was one of a handful of pioneering theorists that independently developed a theory that explained thescattering of radio waves by the free electrons in a plasma and applied the result to theionosphere. He became founding director of the newEISCAT facilities that were then under construction in 1975, by which time he already been director at most of the other incoherent scatter radar facilities in the world. Theasteroid 1985 VD1 is named7279 Hagfors after him.
Tor Hagfors was born inOslo in 1930. He studied at theNorwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) and received hisdoctorate degree in 1959 from theUniversity of Oslo.
Hagfors worked at theNorwegian Defence Research Establishment from 1955 to 1963, interrupted by asabbatical atStanford University from 1959 to 1960. He was employed at theLincoln Laboratory inLexington, Massachusetts in two periods, from 1963 to 1967 and from 1969 to 1971. In the early 1960s he was one of a handful of pioneering theorists (others includedDon Farley (who worked withJohn Dougherty) atCornell,Ron Woodman (Harvard),Jules Fejer (UCSD), andE. E. Salpeter (also at Cornell)) that all independently developed a theory that explained thescattering of radio waves by the free electrons in a plasma and applied the result to theionosphere. It is remarkable that despite the distinct approaches used they obtained identical results. A complete modern treatment of this topic was published in early 2011 by Erhan Kudeki and Marco Milla (both at theUniversity of Illinois).[1]
From 1967 to 1969 he was director of theJicamarca Radio Observatory inLurigancho, outsideLima,Peru. Between 1971 and 1973 he was site director at theArecibo Observatory. He lectured electrical engineering at NTH from 1973 to 1982, and in 1975 he became the first director of theEISCAT scientific association, when the organization's facilities in northernScandinavia were constructed.[2] He held that position until 1982 when he returned to Cornell to direct NAIC.
From October 1982 to September 1992 Hagfors was director of theNational Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC) at Cornell University in Ithaca NY, which operated theArecibo Observatory inPuerto Rico until September 30, 2011, and professor of astronomy and electrical engineering atCornell University.
In 1992 he was appointed director of theMax Planck Institute for Aeronomy inLindau (Katlenburg-Lindau) inGermany, a position he held until his retirement in 1998. Hagfors was chairman of EISCAT Council from 1995 to 1996, chairman of the space science committee in the Norwegian Research Council from 1992 to 1997, and member of theNorwegian Academy of Science and Letters since 1995. He was a visiting scholar at theUniversity of Tromsø,Norway,Nagoya University inJapan, andLancaster University inGreat Britain.
Hagfors's research was very broad, comprising amongst other things ionospheric modification (heating),radar astronomy within theSolar System, observations ofplanetary surfaces from space, techniques inradioremote sensing,scattering from rough surfaces,thermal fluctuations incomplex plasmas,antennas andradio wave propagation. He published around 170 scientific papers.
Tor Hagfors died of aheart attack inPuerto Rico on 17 January 2007.
Asteroid 1985 VD1 was named7279 Hagfors in 2000.
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| Preceded by | Director,Jicamarca Radio Observatory 1967–1969 | Succeeded by Ron Woodman |
| Preceded by N/A | First Director,EISCAT Scientific Association 1975–1982 | Succeeded by Murray Baron |
| Preceded by Hal Craft | Director ofNational Astronomy and Ionosphere Center 1982–1992 | Succeeded by Paul Goldsmith |
| Preceded by Ian Axford | Director ofMax Planck Institute for Aeronomy 1992–1998 | Succeeded by |
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