UpDate - Vol. 12, No. 26, Page 10
April 8, 1993
Bartol prof honored in Germany, Washington, D.C.

     Norman F. Ness, president and professor of the Bartol Research
Institute, was presented with the Emil Wiechert Medal of the German
Geophysical Society in ceremonies held March 23 in Keil, Germany.
     He also will receive the Science Award of the National Space Club in
ceremonies March 26 in Washington, D.C. The Wiechert Medal is named after
the first director of the Geophysics Institute in Goettingen and is the
highest decoration of the German Geophysical Society, which has been in
existence since 1922.
     Ness was recognized for his significant scientific accomplishments in
space research with robotic spacecraft and for his longstanding
contributions to cooperative activities with scientific colleagues in
former West and East Germany.
     The Space Club Award recognizes the important role that scientists and
scientific investigations in space have played in advancing the goals of
the United States civil space program.
     Ness' area of specialization is the measurement of magnetic fields in
interplanetary space and near the planets using robotic spacecraft.
     In 1974, he discovered a global magnetic field on Mercury with the
Mariner 10 spacecraft.  He made similar discoveries at Saturn in 1979 with
Pioneer 11 and at Uranus and Neptune with his instrument on the Voyager 2
spacecraft in 1986 and 1989.
     At the University, Ness also is the director of the NASA Space Grant
College Program, which includes 10 Delaware and Pennsylvania institutions
of higher learning.  The consortium strives to enhance the training and
education of undergraduate and graduate students in the aerospace sciences
and technology related fields.  It provides scholarship and fellowship
funds to support a number of students.
     In his research activities, Ness is the continuing principal
investigatyor of the magnetic field experiment on the Twin Voyager
spacecraft, which were launched in 1977 and are currently well beyond the
orbit of Pluto as they depart the solar system.
     He also is co-investigator on the 1992 USA Mars Observer spacecraft,
scheduled for arrival at Mars on Aug 23.  The spacecraft will then be
placed into a two-earth-year mapping orbit to study the planet.
     Ness is involved in a number of national advisory committees, the NAS
Space Studies Board and the DOE's Fusion Energy Advisory Committee.
     Ness, who lives in Landenberg, Pa., became president of Bartol in
1987. He previously served as the chief of the laboratory for
extraterrestrial physics at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md.  In 1983, he was elected to membership in the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences and in 1992 to the Academia dei Lincei of Rome, Italy,
the oldest scientific society in the world.