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Member of the Presidium
Year of election: | 2010 |
Section: | Earth Sciences |
City: | Graz |
Country: | Austria |
Research Priorities: Space plasma physics, planetary magnetospheres
Geophysicist and space researcher Wolfgang Baumjohann has been involved in numerous experiments as part of nine international space missions. He and his team develop instruments that are used on such missions and analyse the data that these instruments collect.
His work during the Rosetta mission in 2014 became particularly well known. It was the first time in the history of space travel that a probe landed on a comet, on Churyumov–Gerasimenko. As part of this project, Wolfgang Baumjohann gained particular recognition for his communication of scientific insights to a broad public. He himself describes the communication of research results as “one of the central tasks of science.”
Wolfgang Baumjohann’s early scientific work focused on earthquakes. When investigating the ionosphere in Scandinavia, he switched his focus to the physics of nature, studying, among other things, the impact of ionised gases on the weather in space. The violent storms that can occur there are capable of creating technical difficulties for satellites and space probes.
At the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Space Research Institute (IWF) in Graz, led by Wolfgang Baumjohann until 2021, instruments suitable for use in space are developed, in particular magnetometers and on-board computers. Wolfgang Baumjohann analyses and interprets the data collected on such missions. For the Rosetta mission alone he and his team helped develop five of the total of 21 instruments used. These instruments measure the surface and characteristics of comets. The team in Graz even led the development of “MIDAS”, the atomic force microscope used during the mission. The device analysed minute particles of dust from the comet.