Norman F. Ness

Worked with him and co-published with him while in his Laboratory for Extraterrestrial Physics 1983-1987. A true founder of magnetospheric and Planetary magnetometry. An internationally recognized authority as opposed to the process centered bureaucrats that followed him.

Norman and I were colleagues and friends for many, many years, starting in the early to mid 1960s. We worked together on many of his pioneering instrument designs. He was the boss, of course. Norman was truly brilliant and a pleasure to work with. He also could be very tough when necessary to get the job done and, above all, was highly respected by all of us who had the honor to work with him at NASA. He was truly one of Goddard's greatest scientists. Our connection was limited once he left...

I knew Norm from the time in 1987 both he and I arrived at the Bartol Research Institute till he retired in 2004. He was a strong leader of the institute, and in representing our interests within the University of Delaware. His contributions to detection and measurement of magnetic fields were pioneering, and indeed continue to today in measurements by the Voyager spacecraft in interstellar space.