Reuven Ramaty, NASA World Expert on Solar Physics, Dies at 64
Contact:
Christopher Wanjek
wanjek@gsfc.nasa.gov
301-286-4453April 16, 2001
Greenbelt, Md. -- Reuven Ramaty, a renowned expert on cosmic rays, gamma rays and nuclear astrophysics and a leading theorist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., for over 30 years, died April 8 at his home in Silver Spring, Md., of complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (often called Lou Gehrig's disease). He was 64 years old.
Only a week before his death, Ramaty was notified that he was the recipient of the first Yodh Prize from the International Cosmic Ray Conference. The inveterate scientist remained active in his research until his final moments, pouring through data on cosmic rays on the very day he passed away. He is survived by his wife, Vera, his two daughters and five grandchildren.
Ramaty's contributions to the fields of solar physics and cosmic rays are enormous, reflected in his 160 publications in refereed journals and conference proceedings and more than 5,000 citations to his work in the open literature. Ramaty was also the principal investigator on four NASA-funded theory initiative and a co- or guest investigator on several space-science missions.
The field of positron astrophysics -- the study of gamma rays produced by matter-antimatter annihilation -- was essentially invented by Ramaty and his longtime colleague, Richard Lingenfelter of the University of California, San Diego. Ramaty and Lingenfelter were also key in establishing the field of solar gamma-ray-line astronomy, a technique used for establishing the abundance of elements in the sun as well as determining how sun flares are produced.
More recent work included study of the origin of cosmic-ray acceleration and the theory that our own Sun accelerates atomic particles to nearly light speed much like a supermassive black hole does in the center of some galaxies. The Sun, therefore, can serve as a "local" physics laboratory for particle acceleration and physics.
Born in Timisoara, an ethnic Hungarian section in Romania, Ramaty grew up on the eve of World War II in a multicultural environment and immigrated to Israel at age 11. Fluent in Hungarian, Romanian, Hebrew, English and French, Ramaty graduated from Tel Aviv University in 1961 and moved to the United States, where he earned his doctorate degree in Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1966.
Ramaty joined NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center first as a post-doctoral research associate in 1967 and then as a government-employed astrophysicist at Goddard's Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics in 1969. From 1980 to 1993, Ramaty was the head of the Theory Office at the Lab.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, Ramaty's interpretation of gamma-ray data from the COS-B, SAS-II and HEAO-C missions guided the development of the highly successful Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Ramaty was a major influence in the success of the Solar Maximum Mission, as well, and colleagues say that his active encouragement and involvement was instrumental to the realization of NASA's upcoming HESSI mission.
A lover of language and travel, Ramaty was a visiting professor at Nagoya University in Japan in 1993 and a member of the Ph.D. dissertation committee at the University of Paris and the Pierre & Marie Curie University in Paris in 1992 and 1997, respectively. He was also a visiting scientist at Caltech, Stanford University, University of California (Berkeley), University of Pennsylvania, and Washington University in St. Louis. As Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland since 1983, Ramaty was the advisor for six Ph.D. recipients.
Ramaty also served the high-energy astronomy community in a variety of other positions, including Associate Editor of Physical Review Letters; Chair of the American Physics Society Division of Cosmic Physics; Chair of High-Energy Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society; and Divisional Councilor for Astrophysics at the APS. He organized several conferences, edited eight conference proceedings, authored numerous review articles that reached broad scientific audiences, and gave scores of invited talks worldwide.
Beside the Yodh Prize, Ramaty received three other major awards in his career: the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal from NASA in 1981; the Lindsay Award from Goddard in 1980 for his work on gamma-ray bursts; and the Senior U.S. Scientist Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1975.
On December 11, 2000, he presided over a symposium in his honor entitled, "A Tribute to Reuven Ramaty's Contributions to High-Energy Solar Physics and Astrophysics." The meeting presenters described the current state of scientific exploration that was inspired or otherwise guided by Ramaty's lifetime of achievements.
Services were held for Reuven Ramaty on April 12, at the Danzansky-Goldberg Memorial Chapel in Rockville, Md. He is buried at the Judean cemetary in Rockville.
-30-