Neil Gehrels
Cornelis A. "Neil" Gehrels (October 3, 1952 – February 6, 2017) was an American astrophysicist specializing in the field of gamma-ray astronomy. He was Chief of the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) from 1995 until his death, and was best known for his work developing the field from early balloon instruments to today's space observatories such as the NASA Swift mission, for which he was the principal investigator. He was leading the WFIRST (now called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope) wide-field infrared telescope forward toward a launch in the mid-2020s. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Neil Gehrels | |
|---|---|
| Born | Cornelis A. Gehrels October 3, 1952 Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Died | February 6, 2017 (aged 64) Berwyn Heights, Maryland, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Research scientist, professor, lecturer, author |
| Known for | Astrophysics research |
| Awards | Henry Draper Medal (2009) |
| Scientific career | |
| Thesis | Energetic oxygen and sulfur ions in the Jovian magnetosphere (1982) |
| Doctoral advisors | Edward C. Stone Rochus Eugen Vogt |
Gehrels died on February 6, 2017, at the age of 64. On January 10, 2018, NASA announced that Swift had been renamed the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, in his honor.