Published by the Association Pro ISSI No. 27, September 2011 Editorial

INTERNATIONAL SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE SPATIUM Published by the Association Pro ISSI No. 27, September 2011 Editorial

This issue of Spatium is devoted During all the years since, while Pro to Professor Johannes Geiss, co- ISSI, and later ISSI came into be- Impressum founder of PRO ISSI and spiritus ing, I came to appreciate Johannes rector of ISSI, on the occasion of greatly, while he in turn did not his 85th anniversary on 4 Septem- let up trying to convert me from an ber 2011. engineer to a scientist, and, within the limits of what is possible, he SPATIUM All past twenty-six issues have been succeeded. He got me fascinated Published by the dedicated to the outcome of research about space and its implications on Association Pro ISSI activities in the field of space sci- our lives, and he motivated me to ence. Those endeavours are being produce the Spatium series to con- undertaken by men and women on vey some of this captivation to you, their way to a deeper understand- dear reader. ing of Nature. Only incidentally Association Pro ISSI have we mentioned the persons be- In this sense, the present issue of Hallerstrasse 6, CH-3012 Bern hind the activities, and never did Spatium is not merely the Pro ISSI Phone +41 (0)31 631 48 96 we ask about their motivation, nor association’s festschrift for Johannes’ see what it needs to reach scientific birthday, but also the personal www.issibern.ch/pro-issi.html excellence. homage of one of his students. It is for the whole Spatium series the result of numerous personal Today, we make an exception: we encounters, e-mails, and telephone President are going to paint the picture of calls regularly beginning with a Prof. Nicolas Thomas, an outstanding scientist, to try to telling to make it short and lasting at University of Bern learn about what motivated him least one hour, which altogether and his secrets of success. From provided me with the colours for Layout and Publisher whom could we learn this better painting the picture of a great Dr. Hansjörg Schlaepfer than from Johannes Geiss who, scientist, and a grand human alike. CH-6614 Brissago during a long life time, has been Thank you, Johannes, and thank active in so many scientific fields in you also, Carmen! My thanks go Printing numerous places in the world. also to ISSI’s directors, Silvia Wenger Stämpfli Publikationen AG and generally the staff for support- CH-3001 Bern I met Johannes Geiss for the first ing me all the time. time at the University of Bern in 1994. It was with impressive elo- Hansjörg Schlaepfer quence that he presented his ideas Cinuos-chel for founding a space science insti- August 2011 tute in Switzerland. This was at the age of 68, when his coevals were used to look for repose and rest. In contrast, he was about to crown his Front Cover career by creating ISSI. An artist’s interpretation of the paper: George Gloeckler, Lennard A. Fisk: Johannes Geiss’ Investiga- tions of Solar, Heliospheric and Interstellar Matter, Space Sci Rev (2007) 130: 489–513 on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

SPATIUM 27 2 Science First The Pro ISSI association’s homage to Johannes Geiss on his 85th birthday, 4 September 2011, by Hansjörg Schlaepfer

Rotterdam, 1955 to grant university entrance because ics developed in the 1920s by Max he was drafted into the army. Due Born, James Franck, Werner Heisen- The Sun stands high in the sky of to extended training, he did not berg and other physicists at the Uni- Rotterdam that afternoon early get into combat. He was fortunate versity of Göttingen, attracted his September 1955. Nearly impercep- to end the war as a British prisoner special interest, and studying phys- tibly, the MS Maasdam begins her of war in Schleswig Holstein. After ics at that university became his su- long voyage to New York. Passen- a few weeks, he was released, and preme desire. gers lean against the reeling, saying soon found his family, who had fled goodbye to the silhouettes of the from Outer Pomerania, in a small harbour that slowly fade away in the town near Kassel. His father was Würzburg, 1946: Entering haze. Amongst those passengers is a lucky to find a job managing the the World of Science newly married couple from Bern: large farm of a wealthy banker, Carmen and Johannes Geiss. He has which in turn allowed the Geiss’s to When the universities prepared to just finished a temporary job at the earn their living. reopen, Johannes went to Göttin- university there, and decided to go gen in the British occupation zone to Chicago, where he has obtained Food was scarce in post-war Ger- to enquire about his prospects to employment as a research associate many. In order to obtain decent ra- study at the Georg-August-Univer- with Nobel Prize laureate Harold tioning cards, his sister worked as a sity. His chances, however, stood Urey at the Institute for Nuclear gardener while Johannes worked at dim at best: his Not-Abitur was not Studies: no doubt, it will be an out- felling trees, and other odd jobs. acknowledged, additional courses standingly stimulating environment Yet, not only food was scarce in were required to complement it. for both. those days: Johannes was hungry in- Even worse: the University of Göt- tellectually, and eagerly read all the tingen was in high demand prompt- books he was able to get hold of, ing it to impose a strict numerus Outer Pomerania: especially those on modern physics. clausus. Such, however, were not the The Youth A textbook on quantum mechan- kind of obstacles that could discour-

Johannes Geiss was born in 1926. He grew up on his father’s estate, Kornburg, situated some 60 km south of the Baltic Sea, Fig. 1. After two years of education by a private tutor, he went to the public school in the nearby Schwessin. At the age of 10, he entered a grammar school at Stolp, now Slupsk. He learned English, Latin and some French, although his favourite subjects turned out to be mathematics, history and sports.

The peaceful youth in Kornburg ended abruptly: on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. World War II broke out. In 1944, Johannes received a Not-Abitur, an emergency qualification intended Fig. 1: Kornburg 1999 (credit: Hans-Ulrich Kuchenbäcker)

SPATIUM 27 3 age Johannes; he quickly enrolled the world-famous Georg-August- for the supplementary courses in University of Göttingen. Hannoversch Münden, a beautiful small town near Göttingen that the war seemed to have bypassed. Göttingen 1946: Spring 1946 saw him with the ex- The Study Years ams passed, which should then have opened the doors to Göttingen. Yet, The University of Göttingen was Fig. 2: Johannes Geiss’s intellectual the numerus clausus was still in force founded in 1737, and the liberal fathers: from left to right: Max von Laue2, Wolfgang Paul3, and there; and Johannes had to make a academic spirit associated with Harold C. Urey4 further intermediate step towards Wilhelm von Humboldt’s name has reaching his ultimate dream: he reg- survived there up to today. Famous To conclude his studies, Johannes istered at the University of mathematicians and physicists such had to look for a diploma thesis Würzburg. as Carl Friedrich Gauss, Bernhard opportunity, which in view of the Riemann, David Hilbert or Max numerous fellow students turned Würzburg, an old town on the Born taught there. During the na- out to be far from easy. One day, un- River Main, had suffered heavily tional-socialist regime, this univer- expectedly, Professor Becker called from bombardment during the war. sity lost some of its best teachers, him to the Physics Institute offer- The small, ancient physics institute who, after the war, were followed ing an opportunity for a diploma though, where Wilhelm Roentgen by new excellent scholars from thesis with Max von Laue on Lon- had discovered X-rays in 1895, the East. It was in Göttingen also don’s theory of superconductivity. had remained unharmed. Johannes that the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft I thought you were the right one for the studied mathematics and physics zur Förderung der Wissenschaften1 task, Becker said, adding quickly: five days a week, one day he – like was founded as a successor organi- since you are such a formalist! The op- all his fellow students – was required zation to the former Kaiser-Wilhelm portunity to work for the Nobel to shovel away debris of destroyed Gesellschaft. This brought luminar- Prize laureate was an honour and a buildings, a modest contribution to ies like Max von Laue, Werner Hei challenge at the same time, and rebuilding Germany. After one se- senberg or Friedrich von Weizsäcker Johannes generously repressed the mester, one day out of the blue he to teaching at the university. In non-complimentary qualification. got the chance to exchange his short, Göttingen offered the young He gladly accepted, and – within a place at Würzburg with one at man from Outer Pomerania an ex- year – finished his work which was Göttingen, where, in fall 1946, he citing environment into which well received. It even would have started studying mathematics, soon Johannes immersed himself com- allowed him to earn a doctorate making, however, what he calls an pletely. The teaching style in Göt- with his prominent teacher, but Jo- adiabatic transition to physics with tingen and the university’s spirit hannes decided to leave the sublime mathematics and chemistry as minor became his models when, much spheres of theoretical physics, and fields. Finally, Johannes was where later, he himself became a faculty return down to earth to experi- he wanted to be, and now did what member at the University of Bern. mental physics with Prof. Wolfgang he wanted to do: study physics at Paul.

1 The Max Planck Society. 2 Max von Laue, 1879, Koblenz, Germany – 1960, Berlin, German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1914. 3 Wolfgang Paul, 1913, Lorenzkirch, Saxony – 1993, Bonn, German physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1989. 4 Harold Clayton Urey, 1893 – 1981, American physical chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1934.

SPATIUM 27 4 The doctoral thesis was an impor- single sample could easily take versity of Bern (Fig. 4). Son of an tant cornerstone in both Johannes’ hours, but Johannes managed some- Austrian mother and a German private and professional life: for how to motivate Carmen, a pupil father, Houtermans had studied the first time he got in touch with at the nearby gymnasium, to write physics at Göttingen. His political mass spectrometry. Together with down the numbers he read off the credo forced him to leave Germany Rolf Taubert, another doctoral galvanometer scales (Fig. 3), while when the Nazis took over. He went candidate of Wolfgang Pauls’, he he in turn helped her with her to Great Britain, and then followed designed and built such an instru- homework in mathematics. a call by the University of Charkov, ment. More precisely, they assem- Ukraine. Soon, however, he saw bled two units: one for Paul’s group, himself arrested. Two gruelling years and one for the University of Bern. Bern 1953: Ushering in in prison followed. The Non-Ag- With the first instrument, Johannes Mass Spectrometry gression Pact between Stalin and determined the isotope ratios of Hitler, 1939, brought him back to lead to estimate the model age of In 1952, Friedrich Georg Houter- Germany, where, after a variety of the respective lead sulphide depos- mans was elected professor for ex- intermediate stations, he found its. Such measurements were a te- perimental physics and director of shelter in the physics institute at the dious affair at the time. Runs of a the Physikalisches Institut at the Uni- University of Göttingen. Here, he began applying nuclear physics methods to Earth sciences. Then, he received a call from the University of Bern, and went to Switzerland. Intending to continue his research there, he had ordered the second mass spectrometer at Göttingen.

Fig. 3: Reading off the scales of a mass spectrometer, Fig. 4: Physikalisches Institut, University of Bern ca. 1952. ca. 1953.

SPATIUM 27 5 After receiving the doctor’s degree at the University of Göttingen, Jo- hannes packed up all the components of the second instrument, and sent them to Bern. He arrived here in August 1953. Assisted by Peter Eberhardt, a diploma candidate at the Physikalisches Institut, he assembled the instrument (Fig. 5), and continued the lead isotope measurements initiated in Göttingen. The news got around quickly that at Bern they were performing very accurate measurements of the lead isotopes in natural specimens. Ge- ological services from remote countries sent them galena5 samples to determine their model ages. This earned them not only some important publications, but also helped to enhance the institute’s scarce finances.

To extend the mass spectrometer group’s scope of work, Johannes started a cooperation with Wilfried Herr of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, that continued after his return from Chicago. Fig. 5: The mass spectrometer Susanna 2 installed at the Physikalisches Institut Herr’s group separated certain rare in Bern, around 1954. elements such as ruthenium, osmium and lithium from old African mineral deposits and from meteor- Milky Way. Peter Eberhardt, Bern- isotopic composition of the lead ites, while the group in Bern made hard Hirt, Ernest Kopp, and Hans was altogether anomalous. In order the isotopic analyses. From these in- Balsiger earned their PhD and Anita to back-up their tentative conclu- vestigations, they concluded that Eberhardt her physics diploma for sions, Johannes and Friedrich Be- natural technetium does not exist their contribution to these studies. gemann, a PhD candidate, who had on Earth, and that lithium was not followed Houtermans from Göttin- produced at the time the solar sys- Houtermans had brought a lead gen, travelled to Italy to collect tem was formed. The osmium iso- chloride sample from a trip to Italy, some further samples of the tope data were used by Don Clay- which yielded unexpected results. Southern Italian volcanic ores. As ton and Willy Fowler in Pasadena The specimen from Mount Vesu- no guide was willing to climb to derive the nuclear age of the vius was highly radioactive, and the Mount Stromboli, they decided to

5 Lead ore (PbS)

SPATIUM 27 6 do it on their own (Fig. 6), but un- some rocks into a fumarole, to find, applications in astro- and geophys- fortunately did not find any lead sure enough, the next morning thin ics. At that time, the University of chloride deposits there. After hear- whitish deposits on the surface. The Chicago was the world’s foremost ing the telling rumbling of the still deposits were distinctly radioactive, place for applying isotopic methods active volcano, they rushed down as as the Geiger counter attested. Sub- to Earth sciences and solar system quickly as their feet allowed them. sequent chemical analyses and iso- research. Groups led by Harold C. Back at Naples, they met the Vesu- topic measurements showed that Urey, Willard F. Libby6, and Mark G. vius expert, Professor Parascandola. those deposits were pure lead chlo- Inghram7 pursued a broad spectrum Initially though, communication ride with essentially the same iso- of research in this fascinating new turned out to be difficult, as the topic signature as the sample they field. professore preferred to speak Latin had investigated earlier. They con- instead of Italian, or at least Neapol- cluded that the isotopic anomaly At Urey’s laboratory, Johannes’ task itan. Fortunately, Carmen was at was due to the loss of lead from the was to assure the first-rate quality hand: as the Neapolitan dialect is magma below the Southern Italian of the mass spectrometers, the back- not too far from Spanish, one of volcanoes, over a period of more bone of the geophysical work there. Carmen’s native tongues, the initial than 10 million years. For his personal research, he meas- hurdles were quickly overcome. ured the argon/potassium ages of On 5 May 1955, Carmen and Jo- meteorites8. That was still a few hannes got married, and in August, years before Sputnik, the first hu- they followed an offer from Harold man venture into space, when me- C. Urey to work at the Institute teorites were unique messengers of Nuclear Studies (now Enrico- from the outside world. Johannes Fermi Institute) of the University found that the ages of all but one of Chicago. A pleasant journey meteorite were at least 4 billion aboard the MS Maasdam from years. This was consistent with the Rotterdam to New York became prevailing idea that meteorites are the young couple’s first journey to fragments of asteroids that formed the new world. and cooled down during the early history of the solar system. The one exception was Shergotti, a meteor- Chicago 1955: Entering ite of a rare class of achondrites that Fig. 6: Friedrich Begemann on Solar System Research fell in India in 1865: it showed an Mount Stromboli, 1954. age of only a few hundred million Nuclear physics had culminated in years. This result was difficult to rec- The next day, the trio took up quar- 1949 when the shell model describ- oncile with an asteroidal origin. Did ters in a small hotel near Mount ing the quantum mechanical struc- the Shergotti meteorite come from Vesuvius, from where they climbed ture of atomic nuclei was discovered. the Moon, or even from Mars? It up to the rim of the volcanic crater Physicists now moved on to ele- was only 18 years later that the two every day. A few steps down to the mentary particle physics, cosmic US Viking spacecraft on Mars could inside of the crater, they placed rays, nuclear fission reactors, or to certify their Martian origin.

6 Willard F. Libby, 1908, Colorado, USA – 1980, Los Angeles, USA, Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry, 1960. 7 Mark G. Inghram, 1919, Livingston, USA – 2003, Holland, USA, one of the first scientists to combine measurements on meteorites and Earth to find the Earth’s own age. 8 See Spatium no. 23: Meteorites, by Beda Hofmann, February 2009.

SPATIUM 27 7 Friedrich Begemann had arrived in Chicago a year before Johannes to work in Willard Libby’s laboratory. He investigated the global transport of water in the Earth’s atmosphere by measuring natural tritium, and tritium released by nuclear tests. With Libby’s help, Carmen obtained a green card, allowing her to work in Begemann’s group. As a lab assistant, she had to enrich deuterium and tritium in water by elec- trolysis. One day, Begemann got hold of a piece of the Norton County meteorite that had fallen in Kansas in 1948. Together with Johannes, he determined its tritium and 3He content, which in turn en- Fig. 7: Johannes Geiss in front of the apartment in Chicago, 1956. abled them to estimate the cosmic- ray exposure age9 of this meteorite. This was an entirely new type of age, which is useful to estimate the Geiss’s to join them to travel across Miami as Associate Professors to moment when the meteorite is the entire United States down to building up a paleo-climate research liberated by an impact event from Mexico City. After the congress, laboratory11. Less than a month its parent body, be it an asteroid, a they returned via the Pacific Ocean later, Friedrich Houtermans sent moon, or a planet. Many years later, coast to California, visited the Grand Johannes a letter asking him to re- when astronauts returned lunar Canyon, and reached Chicago, after turn to Bern to take charge of the rocks, the exposure ages attained some 5,000 km in Begemann’s car. mass spectrometer laboratory again. new significance for determining What to do now? Cesare Emiliani the ages of lunar craters. One of the research associates in and Johannes decided to order the Harold Urey’s lab was Cesare Emil- components for the mass spectro In 1956, Friedrich Begemann and iani10. He explored ocean tempera- meter from the workshop of their Johannes followed an invitation to ture variations during the ice ages institute in Chicago. Then, Emiliani report on their research results at from the oxygen isotopes in micro- would go directly to Miami, while the 20th International Geological shells of deep-sea cores. In autumn Johannes would return to Bern, and Congress in Mexico City. Bege- 1956, Emiliani and Johannes re- join him when the mass spectro mann owned a car, and he and his ceived offers to join the Marine meter components had arrived fiancée Margarethe invited the Laboratory of the University of there.

9 The cosmic-ray exposure age is the time the meteorite was underway in space. 10 Cesare Emiliani, 1922, Bologna, Italy – 1995, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, Italian-American geologist and micro-paleontol- ogist, founder of paleo-oceanography. 11 Paleo-climatology is the study of the Earth’s past climate. It uses a broad variety of proxy methods from the earth and life sciences such as tree rings, corals, shells and microfossils to reconstruct the past states of the Earth’s climate.

SPATIUM 27 8 Bern 1957: Introducing Miami, 1958: Starting least thanks to the wonderful cli- Meteorite Research Paleo-Climate Research mate: it was much more relaxed, and Carmen and Johannes enjoyed it to Back in Bern, Johannes initiated The mass spectrometer components the full. They got Florida driver’s li- meteorite research at the Physikali reached Miami in summer 1958: censes, and bought their first Amer- sches Institut. Progress, however, was time had come for Johannes to join ican car, a hardtop Studebaker. Her rather slow, as some equipment had Cesare Emiliani. The Geiss’s trav- green card enabled Carmen to first to be built, bought or bor- elled to Genoa, and embarked on work for Pan American Airways on rowed. Simultaneously, he prepared an Italian freighter for America. It Miami Beach. In their leisure time, his habilitation thesis with a paper was quite an unusual journey, not the Geiss’s visited the Everglades or on meteorite ages, and on the in- only due to the cargo consisting of the Florida Keys, or went sailing teraction of cosmic rays with me- Fiats, garlic, and a few passengers, with friends. teorites. Such interactions occur but also because the captain used when high-energy cosmic ray par- to offer a drink on the bridge when At the Marine Laboratory, Cesare ticles impinge on meteorites lead- the time came to admire the sunset. Emiliani and Johannes built up the ing to losses of protons and neutrons The freighter’s first stop was in La paleo-climate research laboratory. from the atomic nuclei of the me- Guaira near Caracas, where the Fiats Johannes assembled the mass spec- teoritic material. This is a natural were unloaded. After passing-by trometer. Searching for a glass- form of nuclear destruction, called Jamaica, it landed in Havana. The blower to produce the vacuum spallation. Johannes derived simple Geiss’s changed to a smaller vessel to holding parts, he found one to the formulae describing the spallation go to Fort Lauderdale, where Cesare north of Miami, who, unfortunately, production rates needed for inter- Emiliani picked them up, and drove only knew about blowing Christ- preting the isotopic data of noble them to their studio in the Coconut mas tree balls. As Johannes had gases. Soon after, a group at the Grove in the South of Miami. gained some experience in this type University of California in La Jolla of craftwork in Bern, he instructed published a set of radioactive spal- The life style in Florida was quite the glass blower appropriately and lation products in a freshly fallen different from that in Chicago, not together they were able to produce meteorite. From those data and his own results, Johannes in turn concluded that the galactic cosmic rays had been roughly constant over the past several million years. This was important news, as it is the key to estimating the cosmic-ray exposure age of meteorites. Johannes received invitations to report about his results at summer schools and meetings, including the first Space Sci- ence Symposium of COSPAR in Nice, January 1960, and the VIII. Conference on Cosmic Rays in Jaipur, India, December 1963 (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8: Visiting the Taj Mahal, India 1963. From left to right: Charles McCusker, Johannes Geiss, and Jacques Labeyrie.

SPATIUM 27 9 the required parts for the mass spec- cores, and other global climate Bern: Scientist, Teacher trometer. When everything was in indicators. and Faculty Member place, measurements could start. Emiliani and Johannes analysed the After returning to Bern, Johannes The Scientist 18O/16O ratio in the shells of Glo- presented the Miami results in a va- bigerinoides sacculifer, a single celled riety of summer schools and scien- After a wonderful year in Miami, organism characterised by the ab- tific meetings. Roger Revelle12 and the Geiss’s returned to Bern. Jo- sence of any tissues and organs. This Gustaf Arrhenius13 invited him to hannes took up the meteorite re- simple form of life lives close to the report at the First International search programme, and with some ocean surface, and, upon dying, Oceanographic Congress held at effort, obtained meteorite samples sinks down to the sea floor, where the United Nations Headquarters from many sources, including mu- over thousands of years it forms in New York, September 1959. They seums in Washington, Vienna and entire strata holding the history of even organised his transport by the Moscow, and the Geological Ser- seawater temperature at the surface. US Military Air Transport System. vices of Afghanistan and Sudan of This allowed them to derive the evolution of the surface water temperature during the later part of the Pleistocene, the epoch of periodi- cal glaciations.

Parallel to their experimental work, Emiliani and Johannes published a paper “On Glaciations and their Causes” (1). A theory that was quite popular at the time interpreted the sequence of glaciations as a self- sustained oscillation, however, they considered this view wrong. Instead, they preferred Milankovich’s proposal that variations of the summer insolation at Northern latitudes re- sulting from periodic perturbations of the Earth’s motion by the planets and the Moon had triggered the glaciations. Indeed, the Milankovich Fig. 9: With the same assiduity as demonstrated when estimating the age mechanism was the only theory to of meteorites, the physics team at the University of Bern participated in university championships. This picture shows on the front row from left to right: Johannes Geiss, provide for a time-scale, which in Otto Eugster, Hans Wyniger, Ernst Lenggenhager, Hans Balsiger, and on the back row turn corresponded roughly to the Arthur Liener, Heinz Hofstetter, Kurt Marti, Peter Eberhardt, Ernest Kopp, Fritz data extracted from the deep-sea Bühler, Friedrich Begemann.

12 Roger Randall Dougan Revelle, 1909, Seattle, Washington – 1991, San Diego, California, Director, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, California, one of the first scientists to study global warming and the movement of Earth’s tec- tonic plates. 13 Gustaf Olof Svante Arrhenius, 1922, professor at the Arrhenius Laboratory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.

SPATIUM 27 10 which he, together with Hans The Teacher and In order to prepare the Physikalis- Oeschger14, determined the expo- Faculty Member ches Institut for a grand future, Jo- sure ages. Besides his scientific ac- hannes formed three divisions re- tivities, Johannes began teaching Johannes began teaching at the flecting the three major research at the university, and taking up University of Bern in 1959 with areas pursued at that time. Each of increasingly challenging university lectures on nuclear physics includ- them defined their own research functions. ing the newly established nuclear programmes, and each was respon- shell model. Later, he gave introduc- sible for securing the necessary re- To enhance their measuring capa- tory courses in experimental phys- search funds. Over the many years bilities, the workshop of the Physi- ics for science and medical students, since, the divisions have retained kalisches Institut built several mass as well as advanced lectures on their identity, although their re- spectrometers based on a design by plasma physics, nucleosynthesis, and search areas have evolved of course. Peter Eberhardt; this design was es- experimental cosmology. His pub- Presently these are: pecially suited for analysing tiniest lications made in Chicago earned amounts of noble gases. This type of him worldwide acknowledgment, 1. The Space Research & Planetary instrument was in strong demand and in 1960 convinced the Execu- Sciences Division initially led by Jo- elsewhere too: one went to Edgar tive Council of the Canton of hannes, later by Peter Eberhardt, Piciotto’s Laboratory at the Université Bern to elect Johannes Extraordinar- Hans Balsiger, Peter Bochsler, and Libre in Brussels, another to the ius (Associate Professor) to succeed now by Prof. Nicolas Thomas, Istituto di Geologia Nucleare in Pisa, Charles Peyrou, who became a di- Prof. Willy Benz, Prof. Peter Wurz where Peter Eberhardt and Johannes rector at CERN in Geneva. One and Prof. Kathrin Altwegg-von installed them. At Bern, Kurt Marti year later, when Houtermans fell se- Burg. and Otto Eugster used them to riously ill, Johannes was installed as measure the isotopic abundances Vizedirektor, and, when Houtermans 2. The Climate and Environmental from helium to xenon in several me- died in 1966, the Executive Coun- Physics Division led by Prof. Hans teorites for their PhD theses. cil elected him Director of the Oeschger, now by Prof. Thomas Physikalisches Institut. Stocker. It had been known for decades that some meteorites contained large 3. The Laboratory for High Energy amounts of noble gases. Peter Eber- Physics, initially led by Prof. Beat hardt, Norbert Grögler and Jo- Hahn, later by Prof. Klaus Pretzl, hannes showed that these gases are and now by Prof. Antonio located in thin surface layers of tiny Ereditato. grains inside the meteorite. Their elemental composition and location suggested the solar wind15 to be their origin. These observations led later to the famous Solar Wind Composition (SWC) experiment Fig. 10: Friedrich G. Houtermans on NASA’s Apollo missions. and Johannes Geiss, Bern, ca. 1960.

14 Hans Oeschger, Ottenbach, Switzerland – 1998, Bern, physics professor at the University of Bern, Swiss climate expert. 15 The solar wind is a stream of charged high-energy particles ejected from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. It mostly consists of electrons and protons.

SPATIUM 27 11 The Cosmic-Ray Group on the Jungfraujoch High Altitude Re- search Station was led by Prof. Hermann Debrunner and later by Prof. Erwin Flückiger.

In 1970/71, Johannes served as De- kan of the Philosophisch-Naturwissen- schaftliche Fakultät of the University of Bern, and in 1982 he was elected Rector of the University of Bern for a term of one year, Fig. 11. Quite naturally, such executive functions brought him in touch with a broad spectrum of research, education and general policy affairs – as well as others – which he tried to solve on the basis of his wide experience gained in international and interdisciplinary programmes. His liberal Fig. 11: Dies Academicus of the University of Bern, 1982: from left the Rec- heritage from the study years in tors of three Universities: Prof. Verena Meyer (University of Zurich), Prof. Eric Jean- net (University of Neuchâtel), and Johannes Geiss, together with Prof. Hubert Herkom- Göttingen now came to tangible mer (Dean of Philosophisch-Historische Fakultät University of Bern). results: for instance, Johannes fos- tered students’ participation in various fields of the university’s During the years from 1966 to Department for Education, cantonal management. 1989, when Johannes was its Direc- administration. Yet, in spite of an tor, the Physikalisches Institut expe- enormous managerial load, he knew As a teacher, Johannes advocated rienced a significant growth from how to remain a scientist in his the oneness of research and teach- two to seven professors with a sim- heart, and abided by his paradigm ing, of which the latter needs per- ilar increase in the number of sci- Science First! manent updating to reflect progress entists, as well as technical and in disciplinary and interdisciplinary administrative personnel. In coop- research. Humankind’s ever-in- eration with the two related insti- Cooperating with NASA creasing energy need is another of tutes for theoretical physics, Prof. Johannes’ concerns. During the first Heinrich Leutwyler, and applied The launch of Sputnik I on 4 Oc- oil crisis 1973, he organised a multi- physics, Prof. Klaus Peter Meyer, re- tober 1957 provoked a kind of a tsu- disciplinary seminar on the energy search in physics at the University nami all over the world. It prompted problem. Regarding the world- of Bern reached an internationally US President John F. Kennedy to wide use of nuclear fission reactors, acknowledged standard. Equally make the famous statement on he remains sceptical as there is no important were the relationships 25 May 1961: “I believe that this na- way to globally, simultaneously and with decision-makers, notably tion should commit itself to achieving safely control the three related Urs Hochstrasser, Director, Federal the goal, before this decade is out, of fundamental problems, such as their Department of Home Affairs, landing a man on the moon and return- proximity to nuclear weapons, the Olivier Reverdin, President, Peter ing him safely to the earth.” potential of a supergau, or an uncon- Fricker, Secretary General of the trolled explosion, and the nuclear National Science Foundation, and On the other side of the Atlantic, waste disposal problem. Max Keller, First Secretary of the the International Council of Scien-

SPATIUM 27 12 tific Unions (ICSU) established its Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), which held its first symposium in Nice in January 1960. Johannes was invited to lec- ture on the constancy of galactic cosmic rays. At the conference, he met Bob Jastrow16, the official representative of NASA. Following Jas- trow’s invitation, Johannes went several times to the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) near Wash- ington as a visiting scientist, and to the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) in New York City. While at these NASA institutes, Johannes began to realise how thor- oughly space flight was going to revolutionise many branches of solar system science and astronomy.

As mentioned above, research activities at the Physikalisches Institut and at the University of Mainz had re- vealed high concentrations of no- Fig. 12: Johannes Geiss (1) participating at the Goddard Institute for Space ble gases on the surface of grains in Studies, New York, 1965. Further personalities are Wilmot (Bill) Hess17 (2), Hu- some meteorites. The favoured ex- bert Reeves18 (3), and Fred Hoyle (4). planation was that these elements had come in from the solar wind tain exposure time. Upon return to Moon, use valuable astronaut time during an unknown past epoch. In Earth, the particles would be ana- to expose it to the solar wind, and order to corroborate their hypoth- lysed in the laboratory by means of bring it back? They decided to try esis, and to analyse the detailed mass spectrometers. Such an exper- the idea, and submitted an unsolic- properties of the solar wind, Jo- iment, however, had to be carried ited proposal to NASA under the hannes joined forces with Peter out beyond the Earth’s magneto- heading: “Experimental Determi- Eberhardt and Peter Signer, profes- sphere in the undisturbed solar nation of the Solar Wind Compo- sor at the Earth Science Depart- wind. Unfortunately, though, there sition by Measurement of the Ele- ment of the Federal Institute of was no such mission in sight – ex- mental and Isotopic Abundances of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. Their cept NASA’s Apollo mission. Was the Noble Gases”. To secure US idea was to envisage a space-borne there any chance of convincing support, Johannes went to the GISS experiment that would collect par- NASA to fly a Swiss gadget for in New York again in summer 1965, ticles of the solar wind during a cer- sampling solar wind particles to the Fig. 12. NASA became interested

16 Robert Jastrow, 1925–2008, American astronomer, physicist and cosmologist. 17 Wilmot (Bill) Hess, 1926–2004, director of science and applications at the Manned Space Center in Houston for Apollo 11. 18 Hubert Reeves, 1932, Canadian physicist and astrophysicist, who solved problems of the origin of light elements in the universe.

SPATIUM 27 13 Fig. 13: The sequence of images show Johannes Geiss testing deployment Spacecraft Center in Houston. The and retrieval of the SWC foil in the thermal chamber at 80°C of Contraves Ltd. in SWC instrument was ready at that Zurich, while the right image shows the SWC deployed on the lunar surface. time, but still no specific flight fore- seen, as the first missions to the indeed, and as a first action sent a (MSC) in Houston: the SWC ex- Moon were already fully booked. headquarters delegation to the periment proposal had been ac- For security reasons, NASA decided Physikalisches Institut to inquire cepted by NASA in principle, in October 1968 to limit the astro- about the capabilities there. though not assigned to any flight nauts’ extravehicular activity to one yet. The details of implementation short excursion to the lunar sur- Seemingly, their impression was needed to be defined urgently. Jo- face, and not to fly the radioactive good: 1967 saw Johannes at NASA’s hannes took the next flight to Hou- power supply on the first mission. Summer Study “Lunar Science and ston, and quickly came to an agree- Therefore, all scientific experiments Exploration” in Santa Cruz, Cali- ment with NASA: the institute depending on this power supply fornia, where the technical and sci- would deliver a fully autonomous were dropped. Johannes now saw entific activities of the astronauts on solar wind capture device, includ- his chance coming up as the SWC the lunar surface were planned. One ing the necessary deployment did not need any power supply, and day, he received an urgent call from mechanisms. Yet, the Swiss delivery with the help of Bill Hess, the Sci- NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center would have to fulfil two mandatory ence Director of the Manned requirements: Spacecraft Center, the SWC got booked for the first flight. Further 1. The gadget had to allow for ex- turbulences arose when NASA de- tremely easy handling by the as- cided to hoist the American flag on tronaut, and the Moon prior to mounting the 2. The mass of the entire package SWC. Again, Johannes could make had to be less than one pound, sure that the astronauts would de- that is 453 g. ploy the SWC before hoisting the US flag and President Nixon’s ad- Johannes rushed back to Bern, set dress: a remarkable compromise in up a team of physicists and techni- favour of science! cians at the Physikalisches Institut to design, manufacture and test in a The historic moment came on very short time what was to become 20 July 1969, when the Apollo 11 the famous SWC experiment, or in Lunar Module (LM) “Eagle” short the “Swiss Solar Sail”. touched down on the Mare Tran- quilitatis. Neil Armstrong set the Fig. 14: With Charles Duke in Zurich, During the winter semester first human foot on the Moon, soon 1972. The US astronaut successfully deployed and retrieved the SWC on the 1968/69, Johannes worked as vis- followed by Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, lunar surface on the Apollo 16 mission. iting scientist at the Manned who, after some walking experi-

SPATIUM 27 14 universe. Up to 1964, when Arno A. Penzias20 and Robert W. Wil- son21 discovered the cosmic micro- wave background radiation, two theories on the evolution of the universe were in fierce competition. Alexander Friedmann22 on the one hand stipulated an expanding universe (1922) that had commenced with a “Big Bang”. On the other hand, the Steady-State theory by Fred Hoyle23, Thomas Gold24, and Hermann Bondi25 (1948) stipulated an ever-expanding universe with- out a beginning. Mathematically, both theories were valid solutions of Einstein’s equations of general relativity, and both were compati- ble with the observations by Edwin Hubble26 of the expanding universe Fig. 15: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin deploying the SWC experiment on the Moon. (1926). Then, the cosmic back- (Credit: NASA) ground radiation findings gave the Steady State theory the death- ments, carefully deployed the SWC Even though the foil’s exposure blow27. Yet, the origin of some iso- and two further science instruments time was much shorter than antic- topes of the light elements could (Fig. 15). After taking pictures of the ipated, the team was able to deter- not be explained satisfactorily. In landscape, and collecting lunar dust mine the abundance of the noble particular, the deuterium and 3He and rocks, Aldrin rolled up the gases helium and neon, as well as abundances remained a mystery. SWC foil, 77 minutes after he had the isotope ratios of 3He/4He and The Solar Wind Composition ex- deployed it, and stowed it in the LM. 20Ne/22Ne. periment resolved this puzzle. It The return flight back to Earth was showed that deuterium was 5 to smooth, and after about two weeks The Deuterium Puzzle 10 times less abundant in the proto- in quarantine in Houston, a courier solar cloud28 than on Earth or in brought the foil to Switzerland, That was an exciting new frontier meteorites, confirming the hypo where the laboratories at Bern and as it allowed to estimate the mean thesis that deuterium was produced Zürich were ready for the analyses. baryonic19 matter density in the in the Big Bang exclusively. (“Deu-

19 i. e. ordinary matter 20 Arnold Allan Penzias, 1933, Munich, Germany, American physicist and astronomer, Nobel Prize laureate in Physics 1978. 21 Robert Woodrow Wilson, 1936, Houston, Texas, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate in Physics, 1978. 22 Alexander Alexandrowitsch Friedmann, 1888, St. Petersburg, Russia – 1925, Leningrad, Russian physicist and mathematician. 23 Sir Fred Hoyle, 1915–2001, British astronomer and mathematician. 24 Thomas Gold, 1920, Vienna – 2004, Ithaca, New York, Austrian/American astrophysicist and radio-astronomer. 25 Sir Hermann Bondi, 1919, Vienna – 2005, Cambridge, Great Britain, Austrian/British mathematician and cosmologist. 26 Edwin Powell Hubble, 1889, Marshfield, Missouri, USA – 1953, San Marino, California, American astronomer. 27 See Spatium no. 24: Cosmic Vision, by Hansjörg Schlaepfer, February 2010. 28 The solar system is thought to have evolved from a large cloud of dust and gas, the proto-solar cloud.

SPATIUM 27 15 terium in our bodies is authentic Switzerland to found the European Big Bang stuff” [3]). This in turn al- Space Research Organization lowed an estimate to be made of (ESRO) in 1962 to jointly exploit the average density of baryonic the emerging space capabilities for matter in the universe amounting peaceful scientific purposes. Quite to some five atoms per cubic me- naturally, over the years Johannes tre29. Furthermore, it corroborated served this organisation in a variety the hypothesis that those five atoms of roles and leading activities, which give rise to only 5% of the observed in turn helped the Physikalisches gravity while the remaining 95% Fig. 16: Analysing lunar rock sam- Institut to participate prominently ples. From right to left: Malcolm Brown32, come from exotic, still unknown University of Durham, Norbert Grögler, in a variety of space programmes. forms of matter30. University of Bern, S. Guggisberg, PhD candidate, University of Bern. One of his commitments was the The SWC experiment was an out- membership, later the chair of standing success. NASA decided to the lunar rock samples returned by ESRO’s Launching Programme include the Swiss Solar Sail in four the astronauts, Fig. 16. They investi- Advisory Committee (LPAC) that subsequent Apollo missions, where gated the products of cosmic ray in- directly reported to the ESRO Di- the exposure time was greatly in- duced spallation. Shortly before the rector General, Sir Herman Bondi. creased allowing the scientists in lunar landings, a new radioactive A few years after its coming into Bern to extract more particles out age determination technique, the being, ESRO’s programme turned of the foil, and hence to get more 40Ar/39Ar method had been in- out to be technically too ambitious, precise data. vented at the University of Califor- and beyond budgetary constraints. nia in Berkeley. It was successfully Bondi charged the LPAC with the Cooperating with Heinrich Leut applied by Anton Stettler of the drafting of an appropriate revised wyler, Alfred Bürgi and Rudolf von Bern group, and later by other PhD programme. After a series of meet- Steiger, Johannes developed the candidates. They were able to esti- ings, Johannes and Prof. Johannes theory of the acceleration and mo- mate the ages of mare basalts, as well Ortner, who served as the commit- tion of heavy ion species in the co- as the time in the Moon’s early his- tee’s secretary, finalised the report rona and chromosphere. Such a the- tory when giant impacts produced during their winter holidays in Sil- ory did not exist at the time of the the large lunar basins. This in turn vaplana, Switzerland. This revised Apollo flights, and it was needed to gave new insights into the forma- programme was endorsed, and re- correctly interpret the results of the tion and evolution of the Moon31. mained the guideline for ESRO’s SWC and the later solar wind com- science programme until it was position experiments. superseded much later by ESA’s Establishing Cooperation Horizon 2000 programme. Thanks to their growing recogni- with ESRO and ESA tion at NASA, the team around Jo- When the Bernese Apollo team was hannes with most notably Peter The launch of Sputnik I had fur- preparing the first lunar experi- Eberhardt and Norbert Grögler also ther impacts in Europe. It prompted ments, ESRO commissioned the participated in the investigation of ten European countries including Zurich-based Contraves AG with

29 See Spatium no. 1: Entstehung des Universums, by Johannes Geiss, April 1998. 30 See Spatium no. 18: Einstein in Bern: The Great Legacy, by Rudolf von Steiger, February 2007. 31 See Spatium no. 4: Earth, Moon and Mars, by Johannes Geiss, June 2000. 32 George Malcolm Brown, 1925, Redcar, England – 1997, Headington, England, British geologist, Professor of Geology at Durham University, Nasa Principal Investigator of the Apollo Moon expeditions.

SPATIUM 27 16 converting their anti-aircraft missile into the Zenit sounding rocket (Fig. 17). The Physikalisches Institut contributed Penning manometers that measured the pressure and temperature profiles on the test launch from the Italian site Salto di Quirra, Sardinia, in October 1967. At the same time, the Bernese physicists began to develop mass spectro meters for atmospheric research and, a few years later, participated in the sounding rocket programme of ESRO, measuring the molecular and ionic compositions in various layers of the upper atmosphere. When ESRO terminated its sounding rocket programme, the Physika- lisches Institut continued their programme in cooperation with other space agencies.

GEOS

As a follow-up to the Apollo SWC experiment, Johannes intended to study the time variation in the solar wind composition with a space- borne mass spectrometer. As no mission into the undisturbed solar wind was in sight, he joined forces with Prof. Reimar Lüst33, Director of the Max Planck Institut für Extra terrestrische Physik (MPE) in Garch- ing, and submitted an instrument proposal for the forthcoming geo- stationary satellite GEOS, the first scientific spacecraft of the newly founded European Space Agency

Fig.: 17: Launch of the Zenit sounding rocket from Salto di Quirra, Sardinia, 33 Reimar Lüst, 1923, Barmen, Ger- 1967 (upper panel). Below: after-launch conference, from left to right: Nik Schliep many, German astrophysicist, Presi- (Contraves), Johannes Geiss, Mr. Lehman (University Geneva), Ernest Kopp (Physika dent of the Max Planck Society lisches Institut), Karl Kotacka (Contraves). 1972–84, Director General of ESA 1984–90.

SPATIUM 27 17 (ESA)34. After some queries, the pro- Giotto was launched by ESA’s posal was accepted. Peter Eberhardt Ariane-1 launcher in 1985 on a and Johannes acted as Group Lead- seven-year interplanetary cruise, ers for the Physikalisches Institut re- and then rushed through the com- sponsible for the mass spectrometer et’s coma with a relative velocity of on the one hand, and Reimar Lüst some 245,000 km/h at a distance at MPE for the electronics on the of a mere 600 km from the comet’s other hand. The GEOS instrument nucleus. This breathtaking mission was designed specifically for ion was an outstanding success: it pro- composition measurements in the Fig. 18: Receiving data from the vided the first close-up images of a magnetosphere; it initiated a stun- GEOS satellite, from left to right: in comet’s nucleus and the first in-situ front Johannes Geiss, behind Karl Knott ning series of world-standard space- (ESA), Hans Balsiger, Peter Eberhardt, measurements of its gas and dust, borne mass spectrometers by the H. Rosenbauer (MPE), D. Young. and consolidated ESA’s fame as a Physikalisches Institut. world leader in complex space science missions. Johannes subcontracted manufac- turing and testing of two flight Giotto models to Contraves. Yet it turned Rosetta-Rosina out that the Swiss National Science At that time, there were plans for Foundation providing the funding a joint ESA-NASA International When Prof. Roger-Maurice Bon- for the Swiss part, was very reluctant Comet Mission (ICM), whereby net took over the helm of ESA’s to accept industrial partners in such NASA would implement a rendez- Science Directorate in 1983, he in- programmes. As we will see later, this vous with comet Temple-2, while stalled two committees to prepare a experience prompted Johannes to ESA would execute a fast fly-by of new long-term plan for the science initiate a new institutional arrange- Halley’s comet. As NASA decided programme, called the Horizon- ment providing scientists as well as to step back a few years later, ESA 2000 plan. This document had on industrial partners with a sound ba- tackled the mission on its own, call- the one hand to stimulate the sis for participating in the Agency’s ing it Giotto35. The payload con- European science community, and scientific programmes. sisted of a camera and three mass on the other to secure the timely spectrometers to identify the mat- availability of new enabling tech- GEOS was launched in 1977 from ter in the comet’s tail. Of course, the nologies. After some preparative Cape Canaveral, and the mass spec- Physikalisches Institut contributed work, the Topical Teams came up trometer became a resounding suc- mass spectrometers, for which Hans with a programme characterized by cess. The second flight model was Balsiger served as Principal Investi- three large “Cornerstone Missions”. launched on GEOS-2 one year later. gator (PI), while Kathrin Altwegg- The proposals were: They allowed scientists to identify von Burg and Johannes acted as – for astronomy: the x-ray multi for the first time unambiguously the Co-Investigators. Peter Eberhardt mirror mission (XMM), origin of the ions in the Earth’s was Co-I of the neutral gas mass – for astrophysics: the far infrared magnetosphere (Fig. 18). spectrometer. Herschel Mission, and for

34 ESA was founded in 1975 as a successor organization embracing both the former European Space Research Organization (ESRO) and the former European Launcher Development Organization (ELDO). 35 In honour of Giotto di Bondone, 1266, Florence, Italy – 1337, Florence, Italian painter, creator of the famous painting Adoration of the Magi in the Scrovegni Capel in Padua in 1305 showing the Halley comet, one of its earliest representations in history.

SPATIUM 27 18 – solar system science: the com- bined SOHO-Cluster mission.

These proposals were well received by the Survey Committee, but it was up to Johannes to submit a fourth, unsolicited proposal for a mission in the field of planets and comets termed “Planetary Mission to Primordial Bodies/Including Return of Pristine Material”. While the sample return part had to be cancelled later due to reasons of cost, the primordial bodies part became the Rosetta mission currently underway to comet Churyumov- Gerasimenko36. The Physikalisches Institut continued its tradition by Fig. 19: Scientific talks on the roof of the Physikalisches Institut, from left to contributing another mass spec- right Johannes Geiss, Joseph Fischer, and George Gloeckler (University of trometer, this time bearing the Maryland). affectionate name Rosina, with Hans Balsiger and later Kathrin tut contributed to the Solar Wind preted the solar wind composition Altwegg-von Burg as PI. Ion Composition Experiment data38. The results of the wind speed (SWICS), a special time-of-flight and temperature measurements are mass spectrometer designed by Prof. shown in Fig. 20. It turns out that Ulysses-SWICS George Gloeckler37 of the Univer- the speed of the solar wind (more sity of Maryland, Fig. 19. The ESA precisely that of helium) is fast and As a result of the formation of the built spacecraft Ulysses was launched nearly constant at high latitudes solar system, all planets circle the by the US Space Shuttle in Octo- reaching some 800 km/h, whereas Sun nearly in the ecliptic plane, ber 1990, and it remained opera- it is slower and more variable in and therefore all space probes also tional for the subsequent 19 years lower latitudes. The solar corona move near the ecliptic plane. This completing three 6-year orbits temperature on the other hand is was true at least until 1992, when around the Sun. lower at high latitudes, while it the joint ESA-NASA spacecraft reaches values of some 2.5 million Ulysses swung-by Jupiter, bring- The unique orbit of Ulysses allowed K near the ecliptic plane. It is ob- ing it far out of the ecliptic plane for the first ever measurements over vious how much our portrait of the on an orbit towards the Sun’s poles. the poles of our daytime star. George Sun has gained by including high In the frame of an international Gloeckler, Johannes and Rudolf solar latitudes thanks to Ulysses. consortium, the Physikalisches Insti- von Steiger evaluated and inter-

36 See Spatium no. 4: Kometen, by Kathrin Altwegg-von Burg, October 1999. 37 George Gloeckler, 1937, Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, investigated the heliosphere in three dimensions with experiments on the Voyager and Ulyssses spacecraft. 38 See Spatium no. 2: Das neue Bild der Sonne, by Rudolf von Steiger, November 1998.

SPATIUM 27 19 Interior. The difficulties encoun- tered when negotiating the financial support with the SNSF for the GEOS mass spectrometer prompted Johannes to act. To this end, he contacted Dr. Peter Creola, who had just returned from ESA’s headquarters, to taking over the helm of the Swiss ESA delegation, and Dr. Jean-Pierre Ruder of the De- partment of the Interior. The trio designed the Prodex (Programme de dévelopment d’expériences), and got it accepted in Switzerland and by ESA too. In contrast to ESA’s science programme, which is mandatory for all member states, Pro- Fig. 20: Probing the solar wind with the Ulysses / SWICS instrument: The dex is designed as an optional pro- yellow line indicates the speed of the solar wind while the green line shows the corona gramme intended to serve the par- temperature. (Credit: R. von Steiger). ticipating states in the development of scientific instruments. Pioneering the Swiss PRODEX Space Community Yet, Swiss participation in ESRO SOHO-CELIAS After the foundation of ESRO, the programmes turned out to be much question came up as to whether a more difficult than expected be- The first cornerstone mission of Swiss national space science pro- cause ESRO (as well as the later ESA’s Horizon 2000 programme gramme or even a dedicated Swiss ESA) did not support scientific was SOHO39, and CELIAS40 be- space institute should be set-up to groups in its member states. Rather, came part of its payload. This manage the programmes with these had to find their funding mass spectrometer was proposed by ESRO. Sticking to his paradigm of sources on national grounds. This in an international consortium with science first, Johannes advocated turn severely hampered Swiss par- Dieter Hovestadt of the Max Planck the direct cooperation of scientific ticipation, because of a specific Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik groups with ESRO, as space science Swiss problem: whereas member- and Johannes acting as Principal is not a scientific discipline per se, ship in international organizations Investigators (PI): After the two re- but rather a novel method that (UNESCO, CERN, ESRO, ESA) tired, Peter Bochsler became the would become important in many was handled by the Federal Depart- sole PI. When it came to negotiat- scientific fields. Furthermore and not ment of Foreign Affairs (DFA), sup- ing the industrial contract for CE- least, such an institution would ab- port for research and education, LIAS, Johannes felt the need to se- sorb significant parts of the limited including the National Science cure the PI an equal footing vis-à-vis resources available in Switzerland at Foundation (SNSF), is the concern ESA and industry. The idea gained the expense of scientific activities. of the Federal Department of the full acceptance by Roger M. Bon-

39 Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. 40 Charge, Element, and Isotope Analysis System.

SPATIUM 27 20 net, who set-up the Prodex office Creating ISSI41 proposed that the IACG42 should to address the complex contractual take over the patronage even though issues. In addition, he appointed Dr. Now that the Physikalisches Institut not all IACG members could be Henk Olthof head of the Prodex had acquired worldwide fame, and expected to contribute directly to office. Not least thanks to Olthof the co-operation between Switzer- funding the new institute. Rather, and his group’s convincing pragma- land and ESA was well underway, it was envisaged that ESA and tism, the programme became an one might expect Johannes to look Switzerland would become its main outstanding success. Prodex has at- for repose. Nothing could be more sponsors, while other IACG mem- tracted various other ESA member wrong! Rather, he saw the need for bers might contribute according to states such as Austria, Belgium, providing the still fragile Swiss space their specific possibilities and rules. Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Hun- science community with a focal gary and the Czech Republic. It has point to secure worldwide recogni- Johannes looked for and got sup- also begun to serve as a backstair for tion. port in the east, from Prof. Roald other nations to gain access to ESA, Sagdeev, Soviet Academy of Sci- and eventually become full mem- An impressive fleet of scientific ences, and in the west from Prof. bers of ESA. spacecraft orbits somewhere deep Len Fisk, NASA’s Associate Admin- in space, delivering huge amounts istrator of Science. Upon finding Certainly, Prodex was instrumental of data daily down to Earth. The support on international grounds, in securing the Physikalisches Insti- instruments aboard those spacecraft time had come to address the Swiss tut its role as a major player in the have become increasingly complex, authorities. To this end, Johannes European space science league. Yet, and so has the task of interpreting motivated a group including Gustav it also stimulated the emergence of the data. From his experience with A. Tammann, Prof. André Maeder, a variety of space research activities NASA and ESA, Johannes saw the University of Geneva, Hans Bal- at different institutions in Switzer- need for enhancing the science re- siger, Hanspeter Schneiter, Chair- land, such as the ETH Zurich, Uni- turn of these missions by improv- man of the Swiss Space Industry versity of Zurich, Geneva Observa- ing the interactive, international Group, and later Prof. Bernhard tory; Paul Scherrer Institut at Villigen, and interdisciplinary data evalua- Hauck, University of Lausanne, and and the Physikalisch-Meteorologisches tion and interpretation process. To Prof. Andreas Ludi, Rector of the Observatorium, Davos, just to name this end, he intended to create an University of Bern, to pursue the a few. As the Prodex rules require at institute that could host scientific idea in Switzerland. least 50% of a Prodex grant to go teams from all over the world. to industry, a small, but recognised It was up to Hanspeter Schneiter to Swiss space industrial community At an informal meeting in 1989, draft a letter to the Federal Coun- could emerge. Thanks to Prodex, Prof. Gustav A. Tammann of the Uni- cil in 1991. Their answer was Swiss made instruments can be versity of Basel, and Prof. Martin friendly though non-committal. found today on the majority of C. E. Huber of the Swiss Federal In- Still, some months later, State Sec- ESA’s science missions. stitute of Technology, Zurich, agreed retary Heinrich Ursprung invited to give his idea a try, which in turn the group to discuss their proposal. found support also by Reimar Lüst It was agreed that the group would and Roger M. Bonnet of ESA. Lüst search for the required premises,

41 International Space Science Institute. 42 The Inter-Agency Consultative Group (IACG) for Space Sciences is an international forum of the European Space Agency(ESA), the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), Japan, the then Intercosmos Council of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, now the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (RASA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Ad- ministration (NASA).

SPATIUM 27 21 while the State Secretary would “It is proposed to create an institute in The board rented the premises at look after an eventual federal fund- Switzerland at which scientists from Hallerstrasse 6 in Bern, Johannes ing source. many countries can work together to hired the staff, and Rudolf von achieve a deeper understanding of the Steiger ordered the necessary tech- The initial steps were more difficult results from space missions, adding value nical infrastructure. When every- than the group had assumed, yet to those results through multidisciplinary thing was in place, ISSI’s thrilling luck was on their side: early 1994, research in an atmosphere of interna- pioneering phase had come silently Johannes received the surprising tional cooperation.” to an end, and a new brilliant star news that the Government of the was borne … Canton of Bern had agreed to con- Who could ever better define Jo- tribute the start-up financing for hannes’ credo than he does here The institute was barely ready, when the first four years of operation. In with his own words? Sure enough, the first workshop took place at order to create an official point of they did not miss those to whom ISSI on “The Heliosphere in the contact for the authorities, the they were addressed: together with Local Interstellar Medium”. The group founded Pro ISSI, an associ- further contributions by Andreas event was a resounding success, and ation under Swiss law, and elected Ludi and Hanspeter Schneiter, and as a tangible result, the first volume Johannes as president, Bernhard upon formal approval by the IACG in the Space Science Series was Hauck as vice-president, and Hans- members, the document served the published followed by some three peter Schneiter as treasurer, with ESA Council to pass the financial to four additional reports per year. Hans Balsiger, Andreas Ludi, André support of the new institute, not Maeder, and Gustav A. Tammann as least thanks also to a skilful presen- After having fulfilled the Pro ISSI further members of the board. Jo- tation by the Swiss representative, association’s first objective of creat- hannes is credited with having paid Peter Creola. ing a space science institute in Swit- the first CHF 100.– into our asso- zerland, its second mandate of con- ciation’s empty account. Now that the financial aspects were veying the fascination of space settled at least for the initial phase, science to its members, and to the The commitment of the Canton of the issue of the legal framework public at large, was addressed with Bern got the ball rolling: the federal came up. Hanspeter Schneiter pro- priority. Together with Dr. Hansjörg authorities followed by granting posed running the institute under Schlaepfer, Contraves AG, Zurich, support for the first two business a foundation with Contraves AG, serving as editor, Johannes created years. Zurich, as the founder, offering an the Spatium series. The first issue on endowment of CHF 100,000.–. “Entstehung des Universums”43 ap- In order to finally secure ESA’s con- Not surprisingly, the idea found peared in April 1998, and was well tribution, a document needed to be rapid acceptance. The foundation’s received by the sponsoring author- created that specified the idée de board of trustees was established ities, the Pro ISSI members, and also manœuvre of the institute. Upon a which in turn started ISSI on 1 May by the many scientists visiting ISSI. request by Jean-Marie Luton, Di- 1995, appointing Johannes as Exec- Further issues followed at a rate of rector General of ESA, Johannes utive Director, Rudolf von Steiger one to three volumes per year. drafted the brochure “ISSI – Inter- as Senior Scientist, and – in Septem- Spatium endeavours to maintain sci- national Space Science Institute” ber 1995 – Professor Bengt Hult entific correctness while using an (2). Its opening statement reads as qvist, University of Stockholm, as a easily understandable communica- follows: further member of the Directorate. tion style.

43 Emergence of the Universe.

SPATIUM 27 22 When Johannes saw that the new References star ISSI had reached a safe orbit in the international space science community, time had come for him to retreat. Expressing their gratitude The following list provides the for an outstanding achievement, the reader with a non-exhaustive list of ISSI board of trustees nominated related papers. In addition, the Johannes Honorary Director at the reader might be interested in other end of 2002, thereby adding a hum- articles published in the Spatium se- ble further line on his long record ries so far, see back cover and ISSI’s of honours and awards. home page www.issibern.ch. (1) Cesare Emiliani, Johannes Geiss: On glaciations and their causes, New York, 1955 Geologische Rundschau, Vol- ume 46, Number 2, 576-601 Seven days after her departure from (2) Johannes Geiss et al.: ISSI Rotterdam, the MS Maasdam ar- International Space Science rives in New York. The New World’s Institute, Association Pro ISSI, famous symbol, the Statue of Lib- http://www.issibern.ch/asso- erty gives her its welcome. Disem- ciationproissi/history.html, barking is fast at that time: Carmen (3) J. Geiss and G. Gloeckler: and Johannes rush to the nearest Evolution of Matter in the taxi that takes them to the Grey- Universe, in The Solar System hound Station in Manhattan. The and Beyond, ISSI Scientific long nightly ride brings them to Report, SR-003, ESA Publi Chicago: a new exciting phase in cations Division, 2005 their young lives begins. (4) Stephan Zellmeyer, A Place in Space, The history of Swiss participation in European space programmes 1960–1987, Beauchesne, Paris, 2008 (5) Kathrin Altwegg, Hans Balsiger, Beat Hugi (Eds.): Archäologie im All, Die Suche nach dem Ursprung des Lebens, Paul Haupt Verlag, Bern, 2009 (6) Thomas Myrach et al. (Hrsg.): Science & Fiction, Imagination und Realität des Weltraums, Berner Universitätsschriften, Haupt Verlag, 2009

SPATIUM 27 23 SPATIUM

The Spatium Series

as of August 2011

No. Title Author Date 1 Entstehung des Universums J. Geiss Apr 98 2 Das neue Bild der Sonne R. von Steiger Nov 98 3 Birth, Age and the Future of the Universe G. A. Tammann Jun 99 4 Kometen K. Altwegg Sep 99 5 Earth, Moon and Mars J. Geiss Jun 00 6 From Dust to Planets W. Bentz Nov 00 7 In Search of the Dark Matter in the Universe K. Pretzl Jun 01 8 Sun and Climate J. Beer Nov 01 9 The Fourfold Way Through the Magnetosphere G. Paschmann Jun 02 10 Satellite Navigation System for Earth and Space Sciences G. Beutler Jun 03 11 Cosmic Rays H. Schlaepfer Nov 03 12 Ten Years Hubble Space Telescope R. M. Bonnet Jun 04 13 Woher kommen Kohlenstoff, Eisen und Uran? R. von Steiger Nov 04 14 Testing Foundations of Physics in Space M.C.E Huber Jun 05 15 Titan and the Huygens Mission N. Thomas Nov 05 16 Astrobiologie O. Botta Jun 06 17 The Heliosphere A. Balogh Okt 06 18 Einstein in Bern: The Great Legacy R. von Steiger Jan 07 19 4440 : a secret number for astronomy H. Schlaepfer Aug 07 20 What the Universe Consists of: from Luminous to Dark Matter and Quintessence U. Wiese Okt 07 21 The Earth’s Ozone Layer Y. Calisesi Jun 08 22 Solar Magnetism E.Parker Aug 08 23 Meteoriten B. Hofmann Mar 09 24 Cosmic Vision H. Schlaepfer Feb 10 25 Climate Change T. Stocker Jul 10 26 Spaceship Earth R. M. Bonnet May 11 Please note that all issues are available on ISSI’s home page www.issibern.ch.