![[LAF]](./lfrank.gif)
Louis A. Frank, Ph.D.
Carver/James A. Van Allen Professor of Physics
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Vita
Dr. Frank was the Carver/James A. Van Allen Professor of Physics at The
University of Iowa, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1964.
His first professional research activities occurred in 1958 when he
assisted Professor Van Allen in the calibration of the first U. S. lunar
probes, Pioneers 3 and 4, as an undergraduate student. Since then he has
been an experimenter, co-investigator, or principal investigator for
instruments on forty-two spacecraft. The types of instrumentation
include those for energetic charged particles, plasmas, and auroral
imaging. He has been, or currently is, the principal investigator for
plasma instruments on fourteen spacecraft, including the Quadrispherical
LEPEDEAs on two International Sun-Earth Explorers (ISEEs) and several
Interplanetary Monitoring Platforms (IMPs). Dr. Frank is the principal
investigator for the auroral imaging instruments for the Dynamics
Explorer Mission, the plasma instrumentation for the Galileo Mission to
Jupiter, the U. S. plasma instrumentation for the Japanese Geotail
spacecraft, and the camera for visible wavelengths for the Polar
spacecraft of the International Solar Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) Program.
His publications encompass such topics as the first direct measurements
of the terrestrial ring current and of the polar cusp, the current
systems in Earth's magnetotail, the plasma tori at Jupiter and at Saturn,
and global imaging of Earth's auroral zones and atmosphere. Dr. Frank's
current research interests are directed toward magnetospheric plasmas in
the vicinity of Earth, wave-plasma instabilities, active experiments in
the ionosphere, interpretation of auroral images in terms of global
convection and current systems, the Jovian magnetosphere and its
relationship with the Galilean satellites, computed tomography,
geocoronal hydrogen, comets, and optics. He has served on various NASA
and NAS/NRC committees and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society,
a member of the American Astronomical Society, American Association for
the Advancement of Science and the International Academy of Astronautics.
He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and a recipient of the
National Space Act Award.
On 16 May 2014 Dr. Louis A. Frank passed away and was buried in Iowa
City, IA.
Education B. S. 1960 (The University of Iowa)
M. S. 1961 (The University of Iowa)
Ph.D. 1964 (The University of Iowa)
Last Modified: Thursday, 26-Sep-2024 18:46:23 CDT