He was one of the major precursors of heliophysics, the study of the Sun and its system. American astrophysicist Eugene Parker, the first to have theorized the existence of solar winds, died at the age of 94, NASA announced on Wednesday March 16.
Recognized for his great qualities in applied mathematics, in 2018 he became the first person to attend the launch of a research probe that bears his name. “Gene Parker was a legendary figure in our discipline”greeted Angela Olinto, the dean of the faculty of physics at the University of Chicago, his parent company, who specifies that he died on Tuesday.
“His vision of the Sun and the solar system was well ahead of its time”, she added. A reference to his publication, submitted in 1958, describing for the first time, using advanced calculations, the phenomenon of solar winds – continuous flows of particles from the Sun. A discovery initially rejected.
“The first reviewer of my article said ‘Well, I think he should go to the library and dive into this subject before writing an article about it, because (his publication) is total nonsense ‘”, he said in 2018.
The director of the Astrophysical JournalSubrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, future Nobel Prize winner, confirms his calculations to validate the publication, whose conclusions will be confirmed in 1962 with direct observations of the solar wind by a NASA probe.
Eugene Parker was also behind the idea of ”nanoflares”, small explosions on the Sun that would explain the heat of the solar corona, hotter than its surface itself. Decorated multiple times, he was professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.